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OLD ST. PAUL'S, about 1550. 

From Anthony van der Wyngaerde's View of London. 



LONDON 



BY 

SIR LAURENCE GOMME 

■I 

F.S.A. 



PHILADELPHIA 
J. B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY 

LONDON: WILLIAMS & NORGATE 
1914 




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PREFACE 

This is the third book on London which I have 
attempted during the past six years. In the 
Governance of London (1907) I dealt with a newly 
discovered aspect of the question of origins ; in the 
Making of London (1912) I attempted to apply the 
results of this study to the evolution of the city ; in 
the present book I deal independently with a part 
of the subject which is only incidentally touched 
upon in the two previous books, and I lay claim to 
have discovered the great fact of historical continuity, 
conscious and effective continuity, underlying the 
main issues of London life throughout all its changes. 
The continuity springs from the city-state of Roman 
Londinium, is carried through the hundred years of 
historical silence, is handed on to the London of 
Anglo-Saxon times, proceeds through the great 
period of Plantagenet rule, runs deep down under 
the preponderating mass of Tudor and Stuart changes, 
and comes out in the open when the Georgian states- 
manship broke away the blocking forces. 

The continuity thus revealed is not unchanging 
throughout the centuries. Each age modifies its 



vi LONDON 

form ; or rather its form is modified by the different 
forces which have constantly worked upon it. The 
ideal of continuity comes from Roman London and 
from Roman Augusta, and it has never lost touch 
with the realities. Each age has possessed the feeling 
for continuity, has expressed itself in terms belonging 
to itself. It is only the terms which have altered. 
The Plantagenet rulers of London did not express 
their sense of continuity as the Tudor or the Stuart 
rulers of London expressed theirs. The material 
was different, but the undying ideal was always 
the same. 

At certain epochs this ideal has been repressed 
and smothered for a time, but it has raised its head 
once and again ; and certainly down to the Georgian 
period it was strongly persistent. 1 believe that it 
still exists, that though it is once again repressed and 
smothered it is there strongly working towards its 
destined use, ready to hand when once it is clear that 
the moment for it has arrived. 

The value to the history of English institutions 
from a close study of London is very great. It sets 
up a standard of comparison both with local and 
national institutions, and it throws considerable light 
upon the evolution of the state. Scholars have been 
too apt to approach the study of English institutions 
in terms of their latest historical condition, instead of 
in terms of their earliest condition, and it is only when 
we come to deal with the facts which arise out of 
the comparative method that we can see the false 



PREFACE vii 

issues which arise from this treatment of the subject. 
London in relation to England was in the earliest 
period outside all that Anglo-Saxon polity could hold. 
Its existence and its continuance were never parts 
of the English settlement of the country, and it is 
because the non-English elements of London are so 
prominent that we are able to define the special posi- 
tion to which it attained in that settlement. London 
was never a city of the English, but it became a city- 
institution under English dominance. This is a vital 
distinction, and because it is possible to make it, the 
facts on both the London side and the English side 
can be classified and arranged in distinct groups — 
groups having relationship one to the other, but 
so dissimilar as never to have merged. The merging 
of London into early English institutions is, in fact, 
an unthinkable proposition, for they nowhere meet 
on common ground. 

I am aware of the opposition to such a point of 
view. Coming from the schools which have so long 
been dominated by the sweeping generalities of 
Freeman and his followers, it is an opposition not 
easy to meet. Because Stubbs on purely scientific 
grounds, and Freeman on historical grounds, have 
proved, and I think successfully proved, that the 
English conquest resulted in the dominance of 
English government, language, and life generally, it is 
not necessary to conclude that in no spot in Teutonic 
England did pre-English life exist or reveal itself. 
Because history is silent it is not necessary to conclude 



viii LONDON 

that no other evidence exists — that both historical 
survival and traditional survival have no value. The 
value of both is greater far than has ever been recog- 
nised, and it is the recognition of their value which 
has made my own study possible. 

To have studied London to the full is to know that 
London tells her own story, and that no one can tell 
it for her. Whatever credit may come to those who 
act as scribe, it is after all a small thing, for the inspir- 
ation is drawn from the great city itself. It is true 
that the story I have to tell differs altogether from 
that hitherto told, but it is impossible for it to be 
wrong on that account. It includes whole masses of 
material which have hitherto been ignored, and though 
the proportions due to the inclusion may not be 
always exactly measured perhaps, the foundations of 
the edifice are perfect. This makes it quite impossible 
deliberately to twist London history or to change 
it in any particular direction. A mere bundle of 
ancient things brought together, as in a museum, for 
the curious may be used in such a way, as we see 
from Lottie's book, but the glory of quarrying in so 
magnificent a field of research brings to student and 
reader the glory of a London instinct with life, and a 
great life. 

I have two apologies to make. 

Perhaps it would have been more scientific to have 
commenced from the argument side of the subject, 
and therefore with the fourth chapter on survivals, 
working back from them to the actual remains of 



PREFACE ix 

Celtic and Roman London. Survivals are stubborn 
things to get over. They do not exist without the 
strongest cause for existence, and that cause resides 
in the originals from which they owe their beginning. 
I thought, however, that the chapter would be 
better in its chronological order, so that the argument 
should rest upon historical rather than anthropological 
methods. The structure of the book being historical, 
its order should be historical, but the reader would 
do well to consider the general position from the point 
of view now suggested. 

I have also one word to say about the tradition of 
London. I could not omit this from my evidence, 
and I could not complete it. It will make a book by 
itself, and I hope to publish it soon. It is an im- 
portant element in London history, and has been 
entirely neglected. I trust that the summary I have 
given in the text will suffice for immediate pur- 
poses. I am sure the completed study will satisfy 
many that the position I take up for London is 
historically sound. 

Both the publishers and myself have to acknow- 
ledge with many thanks kind permission accorded us 
by the following to make use of illustrations : — 

The Society of Antiquaries of London, to re- 
produce from Arcliceologia — the Altar to Diana; 
Matrons? ; Retiarius ; and a portion of Braun and 
Hogenberg's plan ; from an engraving, " Edward VI. 
giving charters to Bridewell and Bethlem hospitals." 

The London Topographical Society, to use their 



x LONDON 

reproductions of the views of London by Agas, 
Wyngaerde, and Visscher. 

The Royal Geographical Society, to use from their 
Journal — Hollar's view of London Bridge ; map of 
Southwark ; the Fleet near Bagnigge Wells. 

Mr C. Bathurst. to use illustrations from Roman 
Antiquities in Lydney Park. 

Mr E. E. Newton, to use a selection from his 
collection of pictures of London. 

And I must thank Mr T. F. Hobson, for so kindly 
obtaining for me Mr Wood's charming drawing of 
Wittenham Tump and directing the artist's attention 
to the best view for the purpose of my argument. 



LAURENCE GOMME. 



Long Crendon, Bucks, 
March 1914. 



CONTENTS 



CHAP. PAGES 

I. THE POINT OF VIEW 1-19 

II CELTIC ORIGINS 20-43 

III. ROMAN ORIGINS 44-73 

IV. THE SURVIVAL OF THINGS ANCIENT . 74-109 
V. ENGLISH INCOMINGS 110-134 

VI. THE INSTITUTION OF THE CITY . . 135-164 

VII. CITY AND STATE 165-180 

VIII. THE DISRUPTION OF COMMERCIALISM. 181-232 

IX. DECADENCE 233-282 

X. CHANGES AND REVIVAL .... 283-310 

XI. GROWTH 311-332 

XII. THE GREATNESS THAT IS LONDON . 333-350 

APPENDIX 351-376 

INDEX 377-381 



LIST OF PLATES 

Old St Paul's, about 1550. (From Anthony van der 

Wyngaerde's View of London.) . . . Frontispiece 



V 



London Wall from Bishopsgate to Aldgate, about 1560. 

(From Ralph Agas 1 Map.) 44 ^ 

A Portion of Old London Wall on Ludgate Hill. (Brought 

to light by afire in 1792.) 46^ 

Part of London Wall in the Churchyard of St Giles, 

Cripplegate. (From an engraving published in 1792.) 48 

The Tower of London in 1647. (From an engraving by 

Hollar.) .172^ 

Sir Thomas More. (From the drawing by Hans Holbein, 

at Windsor Castle.) 184^ 

The Bank, about 1560. (From Ralph Agas 1 Map of 

London.) 200 y 

The Strand in 1616. (From Nicolas John Visscher's View 

of London.) 208 v 

Lambeth Palace in 1647. (From an engraving by Hollar.) 210 v 

London Bridge, about 1550. (From Anthony van der 

Wyngaerde's View of London.) . . . . .212 

Whitehall, about 1560. (From Ralph Agas 1 Map.) . . 214 1/ 

London and Suburbs, about 1580. (From a map by 

Christopher Saxton.) . . . . . . . 216 ^ 



xiv LONDON 

PAGE 

Old St Paul's, 1616. (From Nicolas John Visscher's View 

of London.) ........ 218' 

Westminster Hall, about 1645. (From an engraving by 

Hollar.) 228 y 

Westminster in 1647. (From an engraving by Hollar.) . 230 
St Mary Overy (now St Saviour's) Church, Southwark, in 

1647. (From an engraving by Hollar.) . . . 236' 

Cheapside, with the Cross, in 1660 272 

Whitehall in 1647. (From an engraving by Hollar.) . 278 

York House in 1795, showing the State of the Streets. 

(From an old engraving.) ...... 294 

Greenwich Palace from the Royal Dockyard at Deptford 
in 1795. (From an engraving by I. C. Sladler, after 
a drawing by I. Farington, R.A.) .... 296 

Hampstead in 1814 from the Banks of the Regent's Canal, 
then in Course of Construction. (From an enjn'avino- 
by W. Angus, after G. Shepherd.) .... 298 

New River Head near Sadler's Wells in 1795. (From an 

engraving by J. Swaine.) 300 

St George's Church, Hanover Square, about 1790. (From 

an engraving by John Boydell.) 306 

London and Suburbs in 1798 ...... 312 



LONDON 

CHAPTER I 

THE POINT OF VIEW 

a 

London has always been something more than what 
is included under the nominal or ordinary positions 
she has held in the country throughout the ages. 
She was something more to the Celts than a great 
stronghold on the Thames. She was something 
more than a city of the Roman Empire, absorbent 
though that position was. She was something more 
than a city-institution thrust in amidst incongruous 
Anglo-Saxon institutions ; more than the capital city 
of Norman and Plantagenet England ; more even 
than the awakened head city of commercial England 
under the Tudors. She was more than a walled city 
of the Commonwealth, or than a pleasure city of the 
Stuarts ; something more, too, than the government 
centre of the Guelphs. She is now something more 
than a city without a city's organisation and unity. 
But she is not, and perhaps has never been, under- 
stood ; neither historian nor citizen has realised the 
greatness that is London. 

1 



2 LONDON 

It is the something more that matters — matters 
so greatly ; and I shall hope to show in these pages 
how it matters. History will help us only indirectly. 
The real appeal will lie outside the realm of history. 
The historical fact, priceless as it is, is not the whole 
story of any event. Chronicle is not history. It is 
historical material only. There are motives and causes 
at the back of every event. There are results and in- 
fluences following from every event. And motives, 
causes, results, and influences are essential to the 
understanding of the recorded fact. There is, too, the 
mass of unrecorded fact which has to be reckoned 
with, where we see results and influences only, 
apparently detached from their causes. All these 
considerations lying outside the historical record 
provide the setting and the proportions of events 
which have happened, and sometimes they are of 
even more importance than the record itself. We 
are indeed never taken to the beginning of things by 
means of history. It only records their continuance. 
Historians discuss beginnings, history never does. 

In trying to understand the point of view pre- 
sented by London, it is necessary to bear all this 
in mind. We have to gather together its principal 
characteristics, and then to inquire — are they sub- 
ordinate or ruling characteristics ? do they govern its 
position in all the main issues ? do they pronounce for 
a position in the nation of special influence and im- 
portance ? are they the product of London herself or 
are they endowed powers from a sovereign authority ? 



THE POINT OF VIEW 3 

In answering such an inquiry we find that at no 
time in her history is London concerned with 
merely civic functions. We shall find that her civic 
organisation is stretched in every direction to meet 
needs that are national, to perform functions that 
penetrate very far indeed into the national politics of 
successive ages. The stretching does London no 
harm. As soon as the occasion has passed, it resumes 
the normal course of events belonging to the times. 
We shall find in the mediaeval period that the 
most prominent note is the control of the individual 
by the community. In trade and commerce, in all 
dealings with his fellows, in the performance of 
any act which operates in the open, the individual 
Londoner obeyed custom in most things, and force 
where force was necessary. The community was in- 
exorable — inexorable on the whole for well-doing 
as this age would interpret the term well-doing, but 
inexorable always in its own estimate of what well- 
doing was. This great force must have existed 
behind medievalism in the earlier ages, just as it 
continued beyond medievalism into the period 
when the communal hold was breaking, and when 
it had broken ; the dominant spirit bursts out on 
all great occasions, and London citizens are seen 
obeying the traditions of their city. In this way 
London always appears as a great city, and a 
great city is not created. It creates itself from all 
the influences which have worked through its life, 
and London never loses sight of these influences. 



4 LONDON 

Rome, the greatest of all examples, never lost sight of, 
never wanted to lose sight of, her beginnings. And 
London has never, in reality, lost sight of her 
beginnings, however she may have obscured them at 
times. The question of beginnings is indeed the key 
to all later history, and in this connection the point 
will recur over and over again as to whether there is 
a parallel, even a slight one, between London and 
Rome. Extension beyond city life is the basis of 
such a parallel. 

In the meantime we have to settle the true 
conception of events. London is not the product 
of one age, but of several ages, and those ages 
not necessarily in progressive touch one with the 
other. The chronological sequence of the ages has 
little or nothing to do with the history of London. 
What has to do with it, and to a very great degree, 
is the continuity of history within London itself. 
History does not come to London in patches and 
from outside. History belongs to London from 
within, and forms one continuous stream. London 
retains in each successive age that which is useful from 
the past in meeting the new facts of life which arise ; 
and it adds to the old that is retained, the necessary 
fresh elements which go to make up the successful 
grappling with new problems coining with new eras. 
The point of view which matters most in this con- 
nection is the element of continuity — continuity of 
thought, action, and policy. The factor which goes 
to make this continuity of practical value is the 



THE POINT OF VIEW 5 

altogether surprising capacity to adapt and add to 
the ancient continuous life ever fresh elements, which 
turn out to be of like character and of equal force to 
the elements already in active existence. In this way 
London never loses touch with itself. It was at one 
period very nearly losing its touch with the nation, 
when Alfred, with a stroke of political genius, brought 
it again into the nation. It was in danger at one or 
two other crises under the Plantagenets of striking 
out too far on a course of its own. But in the end 
we shall find that London is always in touch with 
its past, is always capable of calling upon reserves 
of power or of policy which answer for every 
emergency. To take one most remarkable illustra- 
tion : its organisation for defence. When occasion 
demanded, it assumed the position of a city in arms. 
This was in strict accord not only with the privilege 
but with the duty of the Roman cities of the Empire. 1 
It was as a city in arms that it attacked Hengist and 
Msc at Crayford; thus it met the attacks of the Danes; 
thus it took its share in the great struggle at Hastings 
under its own sheriff, Ansgar ; it was under this 
influence that King Stephen mustered the men of 
London and that a section of the army of the 
barons in 1264 was composed of Londoners ; that the 
well-known gathering under Wat Tyler took place 
at Mile End ; that the organised forces of the city 
under Henry VIII. were gathered there according 

1 Mr J. S. Reid deals with this feature of Roman city organisa- 
tion in his Municipalities of the Roman Empire, p. 301. 



6 LONDON 

to " ancient custom " ; and that the city in arms 
marched to Newbury, led to battle by the city 
chiefs. We shall deal with each of these events 
in its place, but in the meantime there is to note 
that when the emergency arose in the lifetime of 
the present generation the old spirit was revived, 
if not the old method, and London answered 
to the call on the south African veldt. The con- 
tinuity in this instance is remarkable, and it is quite 
obvious. Modern Londoners never asked why the 
city of London should send its own contingent to 
south Africa. They acquiesced with a silent pride in 
the act. They unconsciously felt it was in keeping 
with the ancient customs of the city. The city 
itself probably did no more than this, and the silent 
obedience to the unrecognised force of historical 
influence provides the historian of London with a 
master-key which will solve many a problem in the 
story we are going to see unfolded. 

The military was, however, if not the least, certainly 
not the most forceful factor in London polity. The 
strategical importance of the city, from the fateful 
events of a.d. 61 to the days of the Civil War, was 
always recognised, as Mr Belloc has so usefully shown 
in his Warfare in England — recognised by the 
Roman military system, by the great Anglo-Saxon 
kings, by the Danes, by William the Norman, by 
the later military commanders during the Wars of 
the Roses, and during the Civil War. But this im- 
mense importance did not twist its greater destiny 



THE POINT OF VIEW 7 

for one moment. That destiny comes to us along 
the stream of time, and it is not military. 

With the element of continuity, and with the 
accretions at different stages as they were needed, 
London finally takes the position of an English 
institution, a city-institution, but an institution dis- 
tinct and separate from the ordinary city organisa- 
tion. In truth, it stands by itself, not to be classed 
as one, even the greatest one, of the cities and towns 
of Britain, but to stand out against them as an in- 
stitution developed from the circumstances which 
surrounded her. 

London never compares with York, Winchester, 
Colchester, and the other cities. She is right out of 
range. None of these cities has the political import- 
ance of London, and none of them has the civic 
organisation upon which the political importance is 
based. The point of view presented by the full 
evidence of London leads us not to any sort of 
comparison with other English cities, but into a field 
of inquiry of wider extent and scope, that field of 
comparative politics whereby London enters into 
the city influences of early times, the influences which 
settled the relationship of an organised progressive 
civilisation to a pre-national system of polity inherited 
from the cradle of our race. London is not a city 
battling for pre-eminence with other cities. She is 
a city battling for city civilisation against tribal 
civilisation, and against state dominance. She wins 
in the great struggle, wins gloriously, and proceeds 



8 LONDON 

to take her rightful place in the nationhood she helps 
to create. 

The break-up of the communal power, coming with 
the break-up of the feudal government, is the biggest 
change London has ever experienced. Saxon in- 
coming, Danish conquest, Norman control, left 
London with her own ideals. Tudor changes 
affected the ideals. Commercialism stepped into 
the breach created by the broken communalism. Fed 
at first by the splendid imagination of Tudor states- 
men and Tudor captains and adventurers, fed in 
Stuart times by economic forces which came only 
gradually to be understood, it was a disruptive force. 
Even then London did not lose her touch of continuity, 
and we have constant peeps into the older ideals 
whenever the city government found itself up against 
the State government. On such occasions London 
always fell back upon her most ancient city ideal. 
Then she once more resumed touch, definite and 
conscious touch, with her past. Such episodes stand 
out in her history quite plainly, and they carry on 
the older life of London close up to modern days, 
certainly to the Georgian period, when we see the 
great city entering into parliamentary politics as of 
old she entered into sovereign polity, proclaiming 
always the ancient ideal. And what is so fascinating 
throughout all these phases of history is this persis- 
tent element of continuity. The means of attaining 
the end changes, but the desired result is always the 
same, the control by the city government of city 



THE POINT OF VIEW 9 

affairs for the good of the city and its citizens, and 
the identification of city affairs with rights which 
were inherited from the city of London when it arose 
from the ashes of Roman ruin as a city-state of 
Britain. 

This point of view is held by no historian of 
English events and institutions. Two historians, 
Henry Charles Coote and Frederic Seebohm, have 
endeavoured to prove an almost complete national 
and racial continuation of Roman civilisation, and a 
continuation of the Roman system of agriculture 
and agrarian landholding. I distrust both these 
conclusions. 1 Roman civilisation certainly ceased in 
Britain with the Anglo-Saxon conquest, but amidst 
the wreckage there is evidence, I think, to prove 
that London was enabled to continue its use of the 
Roman city constitution in its new position as an 
English city, and that by this means it attained its 
unique position. This element in English history has 
never been considered ; moreover, it is overlaid by 
other points of view. Unfortunately, these are tinged 
with that false conception of history which denies 
to historical continuity the great force which it 
naturally possesses. Communities do not lightly 
give up their history. They may misapply its 
recorded facts, redate, and therefore misdate, some of 
its chief events ; they may transfer from the per- 

1 I discussed Seebohm's views at the Folklore Congress in 1891 
(see the Trans, of the Congress, pp. 348-356), and I have not seen 
any reason to alter my views. 



10 LONDON 

sonages of one age to those of another age acts and 
doings which are of supreme importance in their 
proper place, and which become mischievous in any 
other place ; but they do not surrender easily either 
the surroundings or the influences of earlier ages. 
The modern historian often fails to understand the 
force at the back of history, and he will seek for 
causes in every direction except that of continuity 
of historical influence. He will discover contemporary 
origins for quite ancient factors, and, apart from 
his scornful denial of the influence of tradition in 
keeping alive survivals from the past, he will deny 
the influence of the historic sense which helps to the 
same end. It is possible, of course, to carry the 
doctrine of historic survival too far. It is not 
possible, I think, to exaggerate the importance of its 
operations within definitely limited areas. 

There are also historical prejudices. It is necessary 
to refer to these because historical research into 
British institutions is only in its infancy, and has to 
do battle for quite elementary principles. It has to 
meet the backwash from the pre-scientific period of 
historical research, a period which ignored, because 
it did not understand, archaeological evidence, and 
misused the evidence of tradition so grossly as to 
make it almost impossible now to make good the 
claim of tradition to be used at all. Druidism in 
false relationship to Celtic worship ; the cult of Baal 
as an explanation, based upon no scientific facts, of 
certain very ancient rites of tribal and household 



THE POINT OF VIEW 11 

worship ; Celtic civilisation as the product of national 
instead of tribal organisation, are the chief results 
of the misuse of tradition for over a century. They 
were disastrous results, for the reaction against these 
rightly discarded conclusions has affected modern 
scientific inquiry. Palgrave, Kemble, Freeman, 
Green, and Stubbs will have nothing to do with 
the traditional survival, and at the hands of these 
historians we have to consider points of view which, 
on whatever grounds they are formed, have at least 
this common feature, that they do not take in all that 
is historical in London. Each authority deals with 
bits of history, not with the whole of it. 

Palgrave has the widest range, and, while recognising 
a position for Celtic London, assumes the destruction 
of Roman London. "In tracing the decline of the 
British power it would afford a landmark if we could 
ascertain when London, which always preponderated 
over the other cities of the island, was lost to the 
Britons." l Kemble approaches from an earlier period, 
and argues that " Ca?sar says indeed nothing of 
London, yet it is difficult to believe that this was an 
unimportant place even in his day," and then goes 
on to argue with great clearness and conciseness that 
London, with all other Roman cities in Britain, ceased 
its existence. 2 Freeman is far more drastic. " The 
English town, the English port or borough, is a thing 

1 Palgrave, English Commonwealth, vol. i. p. 414. 

2 Kemble, Saxons in England, vol. ii. pp. 266 (and see note on 
p. 267), 291 et seuq. 



12 LONDON 

wholly of English growth, and nothing can be more 
vain than the attempts of ingenious men to trace up 
the origin of English municipalities to a Roman 
source " ; and though he admits " the greatness of 
London," points out its special power in the election 
of sovereigns, and refers to its special legislation under 
iEthelstan and iEthelred, there is no sign that he 
appreciates the true value of these facts. 1 There is 
no sign, indeed, that he appreciates what he recognises 
so fully, the unnoted history of the sixth century. 2 
Bishop Stubbs' view is dominated by his conception 
of the Teutonic organisation, which left London at the 
end of the Anglo-Saxon period "a bundle of com- 
munities, townships, parishes, and lordships of which 
each has its own constitution " ; and although he grants 
it, with York and some others, " a continuous political 
existence," he points out that these English cities 
" wisely do not venture, like some of the towns of 
southern France, to claim an unbroken succession from 
the Roman municipality." 3 It is only when we come 
to John Richard Green that we arrive at a really new 
factor from the historian's side. He shows descrip- 
tively that London, the great military stronghold of 
London, if it fell to English conquest, fell after a 
hundred years of almost independent existence ; and 
he fully admits the force of the fact that no record 

1 Freeman, Norman Conquest, vol. v. pp. 465-167. 

2 Freeman, Western Europe in the Fifth Century, p. 143, for an 
appreciation of the vacuum in English history. 

3 Stubbs, Const. Hist, of England, vol. i. pp. 404, 62. 



THE POINT OF VIEW 13 

and no evidence remain of its capture or surrender. 
Yet even Green denies to Londinium any place in 
English history. 1 

The conclusions of the great historians do not, 
however, cover the whole ground of possible events. 
The Romans left Britain in a.d. 410. The last 
mention of London before that event was in 369, 
and the first mention after that event was in 457. 
It would be unsafe to argue that between 369 
and 410 London was otherwise than a Roman 
city in a Roman province. Ammianus Marcellinus 
supplies the earlier date when he records the renam- 
ing of the ancient city of Londinium by its new 
name of Augusta. 2 There is the note of success in 
the historian's words, a success which looked forward 
to a future when the ancient city of Londinium 
would justify her new name of Augusta. From 410 
to 457 is only forty-seven years, and the record of 
457 is as distinctly against the probability either of 
destruction or desertion, as the record of 369 has 
proved to be. It comes to us from the Anglo-Saxon 
CJironicle. "Here Hengist and iEsc fought against 
the Britons at the place which is called Crecganford, 
and there slew four thousand men ; and then the 
Britons forsook Kent-land and in great fear fled to 
London." London, therefore, sheltered the beaten 
army, and must have been in its full strength for 
the purpose. If the hundred years of silent history 

1 Green, Making of England, pp. 98-111. 

2 Lib. xxvii. cap. viii., and xxviii. cap. iii. 



14 LONDON 

is to be fixed at 457-560, as Green apparently argues, 1 
events do not help his conclusion. None of them 
tells for destruction. Collectively they tell for active 
organisation and life, and individually, even if the 
latter point is rejected altogether, they tell for active 
organisation. Green fixed his last date, 560, by the 
progress of Anglo-Saxon conquest, but the next 
historical dates after 457 belong to the early seventh 
century, and are very confusing. In 604, says the 
Chronicle, "iEthelbert gave Mellitus a bishop's see 
in London 1 '; and Beda records of the same year that 
London was the metropolis of Saeberct, king of Essex. 2 
In 616 we are told that "at that time the men 
of London, where Mellitus had been before, were 
heathens." Evidently events were moving, but they 
do not appear to be more than phases in the struggle 
for the sovereignty of a conquered district which 
should include London. There is no word as to the 
conquest or the ruling of London itself. The king of 
Kent and the king of Essex, each in his turn, added 
it to their kingdom. They would not have struggled 
for a destroyed city. They claimed it as an asset 
in their cause, and the terms of the claim, "metropolis 
Lundonia civitas," are sufficient to discount the 
argument for destruction. 

There is another argument. That the successive 
conquests of the country by Anglo-Saxon, Dane, 
and Norman means also continuous occupation of 

1 Making of England, p. 1 09- 

2 Beda, Hist. Eccles., lib. ii. cap. 3. 



THE POINT OF VIEW 15 

London through the changes is certain in the two 
last cases. The only difficulty that arises is in respect 
of the Anglo-Saxon, and this can be met by an his- 
torical parallelism. The Danes were kept out of 
London until London accepted them as overlords. 
The Normans were kept out of London until they 
entered by agreement, William treating with Ansgar 
the great sheriff on terms almost of sovereign equality. 
This great parallel means a continuity of policy and 
power, and it seems to me to be an absolute denial 
of historical influences not to allow such a parallel to 
cover the earliest as well as the two latest of the 
three occasions. 

This leaves an independent, unknown existence 
of a hundred years which has to be reckoned with. 
It is a period devoid of recorded history, but full of 
history nevertheless. It has much to do with what 
will be said in the following pages. It belongs to 
London, and to London alone, and though it was 
a troubled and anxious period, there is room in it 
for the birth of a very wide range of facts which 
lifts London history out of touch with the history 
of other Roman towns of the period in Britain. 

This period contains one factor of supreme im- 
portance, the tradition of London — a tradition which 
illustrates the passing of London from the position of 
a city of the Roman Empire, connected by roadways 
to the mother city of Rome, to the position of a 
city-state in Britain disconnected from all outside 
states or state governments. The new position needed 



16 LONDON 

tradition to help it on its way. All cities have their 
traditions — Athens, Rome, Paris, Bath, Caerleon, 
Silchester, York — and the extent to which tradition 
works itself into the city life is the test of much 
that cannot be recovered from any other source than 
tradition, of events, indeed, which history has wholly 
neglected. It is perfectly idle to neglect these tradi- 
tions. They, at all events, are the beliefs which citizens 
worked into their lives, and upon which they built 
much of their later history. That London, by the mere 
fact of continued life, has become separated from her 
earliest history is most true. That she has lost touch 
with her traditions is not true. They contain just 
that impact of truth, just that kernel of substantive 
fact, which will enable the scientific inquirer to dis- 
cover the lost threads which connect broken periods. 
Tradition is fed by the feelings of generations of 
people, not by the emotions, the exultations, or the 
disasters of a moment or even of a period. And the 
strongest feeling to generate and to keep tradition 
alive is the feeling of love for the object of tradition. 

There has always existed a feeling of love for 
London — by its citizens and by the country. The 
love of citizens for their city, as it has been so often 
expressed in song and narrative of modern times, as 
it was so wonderfully recorded in the twelfth century 
by the historian of King Stephen's reign, is carried 
back by tradition to the far older and interesting period 
of Roman London. Geoffrey of Monmouth preserves 
in the story of King Lud the traditional love of 



THE POINT OF VIEW 17 

London, " Albeit he had many cities in his dominion, 
yet this did he love above all other " — and this links 
on with recorded history in that interesting passage 
where Tacitus, the first historian to mention London, 
tells how there were inhabitants of London in a.d. 61 
who stayed behind to face the storm with which 
Boudicca threatened them because of " their attach- 
ment to the place." This love of London, continuous 
from the earliest ages, bursts into expression whenever 
Londoners have become aware of their great city, and 
we shall come across periods when this becoming 
aware of London has played a great part in contem- 
porary events. It will play a further part yet once 
again. 

The London which will in this way come under 
review in these pages will, it is obvious, not be a 
complete London. The story will be one of events, 
not of places, one of special events, not all events. It 
will relate to one side of London only, but a side 
which, although the greatest, has been neglected and 
denied and scouted. It needs to be emphasised. 
In attempting this, details which would assist the 
argument, and nearly all which might be held to 
resist the argument, will be omitted. This is a 
necessary sacrifice to space. But omissions such as 
these do not affect the main point. They would 
divert the stream of argument at various points and 
compel consideration of the means to bring it back 
again. But they would at no stage break up the 
argument. There would remain the strong element 



18 LONDON 

of continuity underlying everything. London begins 
on a great note of dominance ; she proceeds through 
the ages on the same note ; she finishes within sight 
of modern days and in touch with modern politics on 
precisely the same note. And that note, unbroken in 
its force and its direction, commands the historic 
setting of all the periods and all the changes. 

It will be gathered from this that the problem of 
London's history is a matter for argument as well as 
of record and evidence. The history does not begin 
all over again, with a new first chapter, when succes- 
sive conquerors of the country have succeeded in 
their efforts. It is the question of continuity from 
one of these stages to the next which is so necessary 
to be considered, and if possible solved. It has 
hitherto not even been considered. Dealing with 
or thinking of London in bits is of no use whatever. 
To get at the heart of it we can only consider it as 
a great city with a great history. The task before 
us is by no means easy ; no less than the linking 
up of modern London with ancient London of all 
periods ; but it is worth the doing. 

I shall work through the elements of continuity in 
all their aspects. I am going to assert that there was 
so definite a Celtic conception of London that it, in 
a special and comprehensive sense, influenced the 
position of Roman London ; and that when Roman 
London was freed from the sovereignty of Rome this 
Celtic influence asserted its dominating force and 
helped to make post-Roman London a primary 



THE POINT OF VIEW 19 

institution of the country. I am going to assert, 
further, that Roman London, thus influenced, in its 
turn dominated the inner working of mediaeval 
London, and in essence dominates modern London, 
first in the silent general feeling of protection for the 
ancient city, and then in the survival of the powers of 
action, never removed by the state, still residing in 
the government of the city. I am going to assert 
still further that mediaeval London obtained much of 
its power by adding to its old life the necessary 
mediaeval forces, and that it was the great glory of 
mediaeval municipal statesmanship to have recognised 
these two agencies as correlative influences from 
which London would gain new positions which, as 
it proved, strengthened and consolidated its powers 
and duties. I am going, finally, to assert that even 
when breaking away in Tudor, Stuart, and Georgian 
days from almost the whole of her communal life, 
she still carried on her main position of a city with 
attributes of a city-state derived from her original 
position as a Roman city. London is in every sense 
of the term a city of two great empires — shall we say 
one of the connecting links between two great 
empires ? — the Roman and the British. To ignore 
this great position is to ignore the keynote to all 
London history. The proof is contained in the long 
line of continuity from Roman London to modern 
London, and it is this continuity which is the main 
subject of this book. 



CHAPTER II 

CELTIC ORIGINS 

It is necessary to state quite definitely that London 
was originally a stronghold of the Celts, because this 
fact has been denied by some authorities and mini- 
mised by all, and it is an essential beginning to her 
history. There are not only material evidences of 
such a beginning, but the total evidence accounts 
for some portion of her Roman history, and almost 
entirely for her post- Roman history before the Anglo- 
Saxon domination. 

London is known by her own Celtic name, and 
possesses two other Celtic names of importance, Lud 
and Belinus, both of these latter adding, by reason of 
later uses, the Anglo-Saxon suffix " gate." There is 
dispute among philologists about the meaning of 
London as a Celtic name-word, and about the deriva- 
tion of Belinus, but there is no question about Lud. 
It is a recognised god-name of the Celts of considerable 
importance ; Belinus may also be a god-name, but of 
minor importance. 1 This series of Celtic names gives 

1 Belenus, Belinus, or Belis was one of the greatest Celtic gods 
and identified with Apollo. He was mentioned as a god of the 
Gauls by Tertullian (Apolog., cap. xxiv.) and Julius Capitolinus. Cf. 

20 



CELTIC ORIGINS 21 

us a Celtic stronghold and a Celtic religious cult, a 
combination of two factors in the earliest history of 
London which cannot be overlooked and should not be 
minimised, and which in reality form the centre points 
for whatever evidences of Celtic London remain to us. 
The site is the first consideration. The point to 
note is that it has been an occupation-ground of 
peoples from the earliest known times of human 
occupation of distinct territory, that is, during the 
palaeolithic age and the neolithic age, as the discoveries 
of implements of these two ages abundantly show. 
This is evidence sufficient to prove the capacity of 
the site, and it would have been strange indeed if the 
Celt had neglected it. He did not neglect it. All 
over the kingdom such sites have been occupied by 
the Celts, and the remains of their occupation have 
formed an important chapter in archaeological re- 
search. The presence of the Celt in the surrounding 
area is shown by place-names and by ethnology. The 
names of Walworth in the south and Isledon ( Isling- 
ton) in the north, together with Caen wood, are 
the principal philological items. The ethnological 
data consist of a strongly marked island of brunetness 
just north of London. Two counties, Hertfordshire 
and Buckinghamshire, are as dark as Wales, and " all 
investigation goes to prove that this brunet outcrop is 
a reality." It is entirely severed from the main centre 

Herodian, lib. viii. ; Pritehavd, Physical Hist, of Mankind, vol. iii. 
p. 186. Nennius, §19, mentions a Bellinus, son of Minocannus, as 
a king of Britain (see Notes to the Irish Nennius, p. xxiii). 



22 LONDON 

of dark eyes and hair in the west by an intermediate 
zone, and the people in this vicinity are very much 
shorter than those who surround them. The explana- 
tion, says Dr Ripley, 1 is simple. The fens on the 
north, London on the south, with dense forests, left 
this zone of population relatively quiet, and they tell 
us now of the Celticism of the district round London. 
To these sources of evidence must be added that of 
the early geography of London, which exactly fits 
with the description by Caesar of the position of a 
British oppidum. Although so well known, the 
passage from Caesar is worth quoting. When stopped 
at the Thames, " he learned from envoys that the 
stronghold (oppidum) of Cassivellaunus, which was 
protected by woods and marshes, was not far off, and 
that a considerable number of men and of cattle had 
assembled in it. The Britons apply the name of 
stronghold (oppidum) to any woodland spot difficult 
of access, and fortified with a rampart and trench, to 
which they are in the habit of resorting in order to 
escape a hostile raid. Caesar found that the place 
was of great natural strength and well fortified." 2 
This exactly describes the position of Celtic London, 
how exactly may be measured by the geographical 
research of J. R. Green. 3 This conclusion is not only 
the initial proof of the existence of Celtic London, 
but it goes far to disprove the generally accepted 

1 Ripley, Races of Europe, pp. 322-3, 521-2. 

2 De hello Gallico, lib. v. 21 (Rice Holmes' trans.). 

3 Green, The Making of Etigland, p. 98, and the map on p. 99- 



CELTIC ORIGINS 23 

view that Verulam was the oppidum of Cassivellaunus. 
Caesar would not have proceeded to Verulam with 
such a stronghold as London behind him, and the 
geographical contrast between London and Verulam 
gives sufficient reason for presenting such a problem. 
London occupies a strategical position similar to that 
always adopted by the Celts. Verulam is at the foot 
of a commanding position, and does not answer to 
anything Celtic. The conclusion seems irresistible 
that London and not Verulam was the stronghold 
which stood the shock of Roman conquest when 
Caesar took the oppidum of Cassivellaunus. 1 

Much has been made of the fact that London 
was not a colon ia of the Roman Empire as were 
Lincoln, Colchester, York, and Gloucester. Whatever 
this may indicate from the Roman point of view, it 
certainly adds to the evidence of the important posi- 
tion of London in Celtic Britain. Professor Reid 
puts it very clearly : " The treatment of London 
by the Romans is an unexplained anomaly." 2 The 
anomaly to be explained must first be understood, 
and I think it can be shown that the only reasonable 
explanation is derived from the Celtic side of the 
question and not from the Roman. Roman law and 
government have been assiduously studied from the 
side of Roman history, inscriptions, and charters, and 

1 This view was held by General Pitt-Rivers, Anthrop. Rev., vol. v. 
p. lxxviii, and Mr Lewin, Archceologia, vol. xl. pp. 65-6. On the 
other side is Mr Page and the Berks Archaeological Society (see 
Trans, of that Society, vol. xiv. pp. 245-250) 

2 Reid, Municipalities of the Roman Empire, p. 229. 



24 LONDON 

only very slightly from the side of the native peoples 
who were absorbed into the Empire. It is on this 
side, the Celtic side, that the anomaly of London can 
be explained. 

The only titles which are applied to London in 
Roman historical documents are oppidum and civitas, 1 
and finally it received the new name Augusta, sharing 
this name with Treveri, the greatest of the cities of 
Gaul. There is no defined Roman status in these 
titles, and we can only conclude that it was one of 
those municipia civium Romanorum, a community 
of the self-governing type to which Mr Hardy has 
introduced us. 2 Aulus Gellius gives an illuminating 
distinction between the municipium and the colonia : 
the former was taken into the Roman state from 
without, the latter was an offshoot from within ; 5 

1 Coote, Romans of Britain, p. 345, quoting Eumenius in his pane- 
gyric of Constantius Caesar and the record of the Synod of Aries. 

2 Hardy, Roman Laws and Charters, vol. i. pp. 36, 145. So early 
as the Lex Agraria of b.c. Ill we have colonies, municipia, and 
"towns in the position of municipia or colonies" (Hardy, op. cit., 
p. 66). 

3 Aulus Gellius, Nodes Attica?, lib. xvi. cap. 13. Cf. Festus: "Muni- 
cipium id genus hominum dicitur, qui cum Romam venissent, neque 
cives Roman i essent, participes tamen fuerunt omnium rerum ad 
munus fungendum una cum eivibus Romanis, pneterquam de sum-agio 
ferendo, aut magistratu capiendo ; sicut fuerunt Fundani, Formiani, 
Cumani, Acerrani, Lanuvini, Tusculani, qui post aliquot annos cives 
Rom. effecti sunt. Alio modo cum id genus hominum definitur, 
quorum civitas universa in civitatem Romanam venit, lit Aricini, 
Caerites, Anagnini. Tertio, cum id genus hominum definitur, qui ad 
civitatem Romanam ita venerunt, uti municipia essent sua cujusque 
civitatis, et coloniae, ut Tiburtes, Praenestini, Pisani, Arpinates, 
Nolani, Bononienses, Placentini, Nepesini, Sutrini, Lucenses." 



CELTIC ORIGINS 25 

the former represents the inclusion in the Empire of 
a more or less free population, governed by tribal 
institutions in the western Empire and by city institu- 
tions in the eastern, the latter was founded upon the 
settlement of Roman legionaries upon a conquered 
territory from which the original inhabitants were 
deported. London was definitely not a colonia. It 
was no doubt in the position of a municipium. 

Now this condition of London in " the position of 
a municipium," but not formally recognised as such, 
exactly meets its several positions : as a great military 
centre adapted from the oppidum of the Celts ; its 
rapid rise to a great commercial centre under the 
government of the Romans ; and its final status as a 
specially named city of the Empire, Augusta; and I 
can therefore think of the Roman status of London 
as never recognised constitutionally. The question 
thus raised is undoubtedly complicated and not alto- 
gether certain owing to lack of evidence. Britain 
to the Romans was ever a province that required 
keeping in order and not a country to care much 
about. " Supposing I begin thinking about the island 
of Britain," writes Cicero, " will its image fly at once 
into my mind ? " * Certainly the differing conditions 
obtaining under the Empire in Greece, Africa, and 
Spain should cause us to pause before accepting the 
merely word-value of Latin diplomata. Rome always 
allowed a certain amount of independent develop- 

1 Cicero s Letters, No. Dxxx. of Shuck burgh's translation, vol. iii. 
p. 175. 



26 



LONDON 



ment. 1 It was one of its greatest political assets, 
and just as Lugdunum. where the Celtic Lud was 
worshipped, obtained quite an exceptional status, 2 
so I believe London, where also the Celtic Lud 
was worshipped, attained to an exceptional status. 
Formally it came under the Lex Julia Municipalis, 
.as did " all municipalities of Roman citizens wherever 

and whenever coming 
into existence " ; 3 actu- 
ally it retained much of 
its older influence as a 
British oppidum. It is 
thus that the Celtic side 
of Roman London is re- 
vealed by the scanty his- 
torical evidence which 
exists, and when to this 
are added the results of 
the study of the tradi- 

Cinerary urn of the late Celtic period found tion of London, which 

in London, in the Guildhall Museum. 

reveals at every stage 
its Celtic origin, the story is much more complete 
and consistent. 

We next turn to the question of the occupied site. 
Sir Christopher Wren discovered British graves below 
the Roman level, distinguished by their remains. 4 

1 Reid, Municipalities of Roman Empire, p. 127. 

2 Hardy, op. cit., vol. ii. p. 152. 

3 Hardy, op. cit., vol. i. p. 116. 

4 Cinerary urns and other pottery of late Celtic period are pre- 
served in the Guildhall Museum (see Catalogue, pp. 19-22). 




CELTIC ORIGINS 



27 



There is some dispute as to the accuracy of Wren's 
classification of these remains, but my rediscovery in 
the library of Mr Saull's original discovery of remains 
of the hut circle of the British on the virgin soil of 
London, which he inspected and visited on several 
occasions during excavations for sewerage in Cheap- 
side, cannot be disputed. 1 General Pitt- Rivers dis- 
covered remains which he considered, with his wide 
experience and minute 
care, to be relics of pile 
dwellings on the banks 
of the Walbrook river. 2 
Mr Reginald Smith, in- 
vestigating the course of 
Roman roads, insists upon 
the strong evidence some 
of these reveal of having 
been constructed on the 
site of British trackways 

, ,. j • Vase of late Celtic period found in 

leading to and entering London, in the Guildhall Museum. 

London. 3 

There is thus philological, ethnological, and archaeo- 
logical evidence of Celtic London. The remarkable 
thing is that it exists at all. It comes from London's 
remotest past, protected by the working of successive 

1 I have dealt with this important and neglected piece of evi- 
dence in my Making of London, p. 38. 

2 Anthrop. Rev., vol. v. p. lxxi, and accepted by Dr Munro, 
Lake Dwellings of Europe, pp. 460-464, and Ancient Scottish Lake 
Dwellings, pp. 291-296. 

3 Vict. Hist. London, pp. 1-42. 




28 LONDON 

ages, but also hidden by the ages. Not sufficiently 
hidden, however, to prevent the recognition of a tribal 
stronghold such as still remains in other parts of 
Britain, as, for instance, at Maiden Castle near 
Dorchester, where the tribesmen of the Celts con- 
structed their defensive works for protection against 
tribe enemies of their own race, and, as they thought, 
against enemies of an imperial race which in due 
course overran and crumpled up their tribalism. 

There is, however, something nearer home than the 
examples of the great Celtic strongholds still surviving 
in remote parts of Britain, and we find it in the Thames 
valley of to-day, where the position occupied by the 
site of Celtic London is pictured for us in miniature. 
Coming up the Thames by sail or by steam, in the 
wide lagoon formed by the shallow waters of the river 
in the lower reaches there is presented a sight which in 
the earliest period must have been much like what was 
presented as far up as London. Travelling by the rail- 
way, one first recognises the higher land-sites rising 
from the Essex Flats on the banks of the lagoon waters. 
Westcliff is the first example. Pitsea, Laindon, and 
other places follow, their natural conditions being still 
undestroyed. At Prittlewell there are still remains 
of an entrenchment, the enclosure being situated 
on rising ground and of somewhat oval shape ; at 
Tilbury there is a fosse with a broad bank on its 
outer side formed by the ridge of a steep hillside, 
rising abruptly above the Thames valley. London 
was only another such example as these, occupying, 



CELTIC ORIGINS 



29 




30 LONDON 

however, a more strategical position, and commanding 
one of the river crossings. (See Appendix I.) 

Interesting as these examples are, they do not 
give an adequate idea of the London stronghold. 
They are too much in miniature. Fortunately we 
can turn to examples above London which represent 
closer parallels to London. The most important of 
these strongholds is that of Long Wittenham, to 
which Mr Haverfield has added other examples at 
Appleford and Radley. 1 Of Wittenham, Sir Arthur 
Evans writes: "The round hut circles of the Britons 
are seen before our eyes, yielding to the rectangular 
buildings and enclosures of the later Romanised 
inhabitants." 2 And according to the best authorities 
there is certainly no site in the country which more 
fully satisfies the conditions usually found present in 
British centres. 3 Close to the junction of the Thame 
and Isis, it is precisely the kind of spot that was chosen 
by all Celtic races for their chief settlements. The 
hut circle floors consist of very thin stones, and the 
superstructure was of wattle and daub, fragments of 
which have been discovered. 4 There is no questioning 
the evidence which these facts afford. The Thames 
below London and the Thames above London con- 
tained Celtic strongholds on the heights which com- 
manded the river, and it is impossible therefore to 

1 Vict. Hist, of Berkshire, vol. i. pp. 197, 219-222. 

2 Times, 18th Sept. 1893. 

3 Times, 30th Sept. 1893. 

4 Dr Haverfield's account is in Proc. Soc. Antiq., 2nd ser. vol. 
xviii. pp. 10-16, with a most useful map. 



CELTIC ORIGINS 



31 




32 LONDON 

imagine that the London height was not similarly 
occupied. Celtic London was not only a stronghold 
formed out of the natural conditions of the site, it 
was a defensive position necessary to the settlers on 
the northern side of the Thames lagoon. 1 

It may be, after the researches of Dr Philip 
Norman and Mr F. W. Reader, 2 that the conclusions 
of General Pitt-Rivers as to pile dwellings in the 
Walbrook will have to be given up. But it does 
not appear to me that the evidence for the Roman 
system of drainage is necessarily evidence against the 
pile dwellings. There is ample room for both 
drainage and pile dwelling in these discoveries, and 
there is still one important fact to get over — the 
existence of so many human skulls without any 
remains of the rest of the skeletons. These, at all 
events, cannot be of Roman origin. On the other 
hand, they may be of Celtic origin, owing to the 
Celtic practice of taking the skulls of defeated 
enemies and hanging them as trophies in the dwell- 

1 The use of terms belonging to a late period to describe con- 
ditions of an early period is a fruitful source of error. Over and 
over again do we read in our best histories of the capital of a Celtic 
king, the towns of a Celtic tribe. Capital and town are wrong terms 
to apply to the oppida of the Celts. There is a sentence of 
Polybius (xxv. L), quoting Strabo, Hi. cap. 4>, which supplies an 
opportunity for illustrating the incongruous absurdity of this error. 
"Tiberius Gracchus is said to have destroyed three hundred cities 
of the Celtiberes.'' This Poseidonius ridicules, stating "that to 
flatter Gracchus, Polybius described as cities towers, 7rvpyovs, like 
those exhibited in triumphal processions.'' This is the critic's 
exaggeration, but it is pertinent. 

2 Archceologia, vol. lxiii. pp. 308-319- 



CELTIC ORIGINS 



33 



ings of the conquerors — a practice pretty generally 
found among the pile-dwelling communities. 1 The 
point is obscure, and if it is ever cleared up it will be 
accomplished by the skilled observations of such 
workers in this field as Dr Norman and Mr Reader. 
If their view turns out to be the correct one, it 
clears away some of the Celtic evidence of London, 
but it does not destroy it altogether. 



FIC.l. PLAN. 
QS4ft. 




Plan of site of pile dwellings found near London Wall. 

But, after all, these are but the fragments of a 
forgotten past which witnessed London's first effort 
towards a future. They do not, of themselves, help 

1 Dr Plummer has collected a useful list of authorities on this 
as a Celtic practice in a note to his Vitce Sanctorum Hibernice, 
vol. i. p. cviii. Cf. Munro, Lake Dwellings of Europe, where almost 
entirely the human remains consist of skulls, sometimes fashioned 
into cups for drinking. Virgil describes the hanging of the severed 
head on the car of the victor, Mneid, xii. 511. The ghastly story 
told by Giraldus Cambrensis, Conquest of Ireland (cap. iv.), of the 
Irish cutting off the heads of their fallen enemies with their broad 
axes and collecting two hundred heads to lay at the feet of 
Dermitius is referable to the same practice. 

3 



34 



LONDON 



us much towards understanding how that future was 
affected by Celtic beginnings. They are the dead 
and useless elements trodden under our feet, the 
destructible elements which disappeared with the 
culture to which they belonged. For elements not 
destructible we must turn to another source, and 




U-m 



iiiimtlWira'flmJJiniEutt 

tfjsisnfMpir 




FIG, 



3. SECTION at B. 





Section of site of pile dwellings found near London Wall. 
G, Gravel. P, Peat. S, Superficial earth. 

this is the cult of the worshipped god. The worship 
of the gods never seems to become quite trodden 
down. It lives on and on, not in the end connected 
with the peoples, the tribes, the groups who first 
invoked them, perhaps even living only as a peasant's 
superstition. But it lives. Lud was god of the 
waters, and he belonged to the Celtic religion as it 
was established in Gaul and Spain. In Britain he 



CELTIC ORIGINS 35 

was god of the Severn, for on its banks at Lydney 
his temple, dedicated by the Romans, has been 
unearthed. On the banks of the Thames there is 
the last remnant of the god — the god-name, Lud. 
Severn and Thames, the two great rivers of Celtic 
Britain, each protected by the river god, is what 
the evidence conveys to us ; and just as a small 
plaque of bronze represents the god himself, as the 
Romans sculptured him at Lydney, so at London 
there is, I think, a Roman representation of the god 
himself in the magnificent head of a river god in 
white marble discovered in the Walbrook. 1 That 
these sculptures are of Roman workmanship, not 
Celtic, leads up to further important conclusions — 
that both on the Severn and the Thames the Romans 
paid respect to the gods of the people whom they 
conquered, just as they did elsewhere, and which it is 
well known was part of their religious polity all the 
world over. 

A river cult of this kind was a great cult, not an 
isolated worship. Gods who protected as Lud pro- 
tected were worshipped, not in one tribe, but in all 
tribes whose location demanded his help. 

These diverse features in the cult of Lud can be 
brought to bear upon the position of Celtic London. 
Both Roman and Celt are interested in the worship 
of Lud, and we can only get at the worship of the 
Celtic god in London through the medium of Roman 
worship there, just as we can only reach the Celtic 

1 Archoeologia, vol. lx. p. 45. 



36 



LONDON 



hut circles and graves through the stratum of Roman 
remains. 

The cardinal facts upon which we begin are the 
survival of the god-name in London and the exist- 
ence of the head of the Walbrook river god. These 
two facts are complementary parts of one original, 




River god found in London. 

namely, the Celtic worship of Lud, and it will be 
necessary, owing to the absence of further direct 
evidence in London, to examine some points in the 
cult of Lud elsewhere in Celtic lands, in order to 
ascertain the value of these London fragments. 

The name of the god is the root of some names of 
cities in Celtdom, situated, as London was situated, 
at the head of a river or at the juncture of two rivers. 



CELTIC ORIGINS 37 

Lugdunum, the modern Lyons, was the chief of such 
cities — the town of Lug at the confluence of the 
Rhone and the Saone ; and there were Lugdunum 
Convenarum, now called Saint Bertrand de Com- 
minges, in the department of the Haute Garonne ; 
Laon, the chief town of the department of the 
Aisne ; Lugodunum, now Leyden on the Rhine ; 
and Lugduna on the Rhone. 1 

Now, M. d'Arbois de Jubainville has suggested that 
the festival held at the last- mentioned place every 
first of August in honour of the deified Augustus, 
simply superseded, in name mostly, an older festival 
held on that day in honour of Lug, 2 and it is note- 
worthy that Lugdunum very early (b.c. 12) possessed 
an altar to Augustus, with a Celtic priest. 3 This 
suggestion helps the London question at its weakest 
point, inasmuch as we can turn to the worship of the 
Emperor in London. Mommsen, in his belittling 
account of the province of Britain, says that " we do 
not precisely know what English town served as a seat 
for the common worship of the Emperor." 4 There 
was certainly an important temple to the Emperor 
Claudius at Camulodunum which "was regarded as 
a stronghold of ascendancy for all time," 5 and that 
this ascendancy resulted from the existence of this 

1 Rhys, Celtic Heathendom, p. 420 ; Holder, Alt-Celtischer Sprach- 
schatz, vol. ii. s.v. Lugudunon. 

2 Quoted by Khys, op. cit., p. 421. 

3 Ramsay, Tacitus Annals, vol. i. p. 70, note 2. 

4 Mommsen, Provinces of the Roman Empire, vol. i. p. 193. 

5 Tacitus, Annul., lib. xiv. cap. 31. 



38 LONDON 

temple is surely implied by the historian's words. 
Roach Smith has pointed out that the inscription 
found in Nicholas Lane, London, which Hiibner 
extends to " Numini Caesaris et Genio provinciae 
Britanniae," * has probably, judging from the size of 
the letters, surmounted the entrance to a temple, and 
that London was thus a seat for the worship of the 
Emperor. The bronze head of Hadrian, found in 
the Thames at London Bridge, seems to confirm this 
view. 2 We have in these facts the necessary basis 
for the argument that as the worship of Lud or 
Lug at Lugduna is associated with the worship 
of the Emperor, so in London there are the same 
associated cults. 

The next stage in the evidence for the cult of Lud 
in London comes from the analogy between London 
conditions and those at Lydney, where pavements 
and other objects of Roman workmanship have been 
discovered which exhibit designs illustrative of the 
worship accorded to this god. Sir John Rhys is the 
best guide here. He describes the principal features 
as follows : 

" The mosaic floor displayed not only an inscription, 
but also representations of sea serpents, or the wirea 
accompanying Glaucus in Greek mythology, and fishes 
supposed to stand for the salmon of the Severn ; 
moreover, an ugly band of red within the lines of 
the inscription surrounded the mouth of a funnel 

1 C.I.L., No. 22. 

" Illustrations of Roman London, pp. 30-31. 



CELTIC ORIGINS 



39 



leading into the ground beneath ; this hole is sup- 
posed to have been used for libations to the god. 
Further, a small plaque of bronze found on the spot 
gives us probably a representation of the god him- 
self. The principal figure thereon is a youthful deity 
crowned with rays like Phoebus ; he stands in a 
chariot drawn by four horses like the Roman Neptune. 




Deus Nodens or river god, from Lydney Park. 

On either side the winds are typified by a winged 
genius floating along, and the rest of the space is 
left to two Tritons, while a detached piece, probably 
of the same bronze, represents another Triton, also 
a fisherman, who has just succeeded in hooking a 
salmon." 1 An interesting parallel to this representa- 
tion of fishing in the religious cult is also found in 

1 Rhys, Celtic Heathendom, pp. 1 26-7. 



40 



LONDON 




CELTIC ORIGINS 41 

the religious cult of London. It will be described 
later on among the Roman antiquities, but its 
essential position as evidence is here. It forms a 
connecting link between the worship of Lud in 
Lydney and that in London. Further parallel 
evidence is derived from the fact that some interest- 
ing points are preserved by the Lydney temple 
essential to its position as a Celtic site. The temple 
at Lydney was in the Roman station now situated 
about a mile and a half from the Severn, though the 
river flowed nearer to Lydney in former times. This 
is shown by a large tract of alluvial ground, which is 
known to have been formed by deposit from the 
river within the last one hundred and fifty years, 
and tradition reports that the water once came up 
within a short distance of the churchyard at Lydney. 
This made the position which the Romans occupied 
a very commanding one, 1 and it is precisely parallel 
to the sites elsewhere chosen for the worship of 
this deity as the river god of the Celts. It was 
a pre- Roman site, and that the worship was also 
pre- Roman is clearly established from the remains, 2 
in addition to the inscription by Silvianus, which is 
not only Celtic in form but is tribal Celtic, 3 and the 

1 Bathurst, Roman Remains in Lydney Park, p. 1. The map which 
is given in this volume illustrates these points admirahly. 

2 Ibid., pp. 22, 26, 30. 

3 Ibid., p. 45, pi. xx. Devo Nodenti Silvianus (sic) anilum perdedit, 
demediam partem donavit Nodenti inter quibus nomen Seniciani 
nollis petmittas sanitatem donee perferat usque templum Nodentis. 
C.I.L., No. 140. 



42 LONDON 

esc voto offerings, which are Celtic and include the 
sacred cock. 1 

The argument is : the same god-name on the 
Thames as on the Severn, therefore the same god ; 
the same god, therefore the same worship. Sir John 
Rhys puts it in this way : " The probability is that 
as a temple on a hill near the Severn associated him 
[Lud] with that river in the west, so a still more 
ambitious temple on a hill connected him with the 
Thames in the east ; and as an aggressive creed can 
hardly signalise its conquests more effectually than 
by appropriating the fanes of the retreating faith, no 
site could be guessed with more probability to have 
been sacred to the Celtic Zeus than the eminence 
on which the dome of St Paul's now rears its mag- 
nificent form." 2 

This argument seems to me quite conclusive. It 
not only meets the close parallels which have been 
noted in the various phases of Lud-worship, but it 
is the only way to account for the associated facts 
— facts which need accounting for if we would get 
at London origins. 

There is something more in the worship of Lud 
in London which it helps to account for, and which 

1 Bathurst, Roman Remains in Lydney Park, p. 49. 

2 Rhys, Celtic Heathendom, p. 129. Mr Cook has followed this 
up by a special inquiry into the Celtic form of the European sky 
god ; and he points out where Lud equates with Zeus, and thus 
becomes entitled to take his place among Celtic gods who had 
a definite place in the religious cults of Britain {Folklore, vol. xvii. 
pp. 35-50). 



CELTIC ORIGINS 43 

presently we shall be attempting to explain inade- 
quately, if we do not accept Sir John Rhys's argu- 
ment. Somewhere in the future of London history 
— the future, that is, which comes from Celtic London 
— there will appear the lasting effect of the cult of 
Lud as he was worshipped at Celtic London, as he 
was continued among the gods of Roman London, 
namely, the expression of a Celtic religious feeling 
towards London in post-Roman times. This expres- 
sion was not a creation, but a survival. It is the 
something more which comes to us from Celtic 
London — the only something which was sent forward 
from Celtic to Roman London, though it proved a 
most powerful and necessary factor in the chain of 
continuity. Its influence, however, did not appear 
until post-Roman times, and we must leave the 
evidence of Celtic London at this stage in all its 
meagreness and incompleteness to resume it later 
on when we shall see it in a new and more power- 
ful light. 



CHAPTER III 



ROMAN ORIGINS 




The beginnings of London as a city are to be found 
in Roman, not Celtic, London, and though the 
remains of Roman London lie 
some fifteen feet below the 
modern surface of London — the 
material remains, that is to say 
— the fifteen feet of accumulated 
debris, representing the events of 
fifteen hundred years, has not ob- 
literated the foundation stratum. 
We are not now concerned with 
the quantum of these remains, 
nor with the quality. Our en- 
deavour will be to pick our way 
amongst them in order to do two things — to demon- 
strate that Roman London was a place of Roman 
power and authority ; to gather up, if we may, some 
recognisable ideal which this Roman London may 
have possessed, and which it may have passed on 
to later ages. 

London is the one place in our island which has 
yielded Roman objects of artistic merit and abund- 

44 



Roman lamp found at Three 
Kings Court, Lombard 
Street, in Guildhall Mu- 
seum. 




H 
< 

a 

< 



UJ ~ 

5 "1 

O < 

^ r- 

'k "§■ 

o "5 

2 e 

ca o 

E £ 



-J 

< 

Z 

o 

Q 
2 

O 

-J 



ROMAN ORIGINS 45 

ance. 1 In spite of the ignorance, the indifference, 
the unpardonable neglect of centuries, this verdict of 
no less an authority than Dr Haverfleld comes like a 
freshening breeze to one's perception of the fitness of 
things. There was a Roman London, then, of great- 
ness. Art does not find its abode in mean cities, nor 
in cities whence greatness of some sort does not issue, 
and what we have to inquire into is what sort of 
greatness was it which belonged to Roman London, 
and which Roman London sent forth as its con- 
tribution to world-history. 

We must first obtain a general idea of the con- 
structive and geographical aspect of Roman London. 
A complete system of defensive protection by walls 
and gates secured the internal glories of Roman 
London from attack. Excavators for building and 
other purposes have not come to the end of discoveries 
of lengths of the Roman wall, and few things are more 
interesting than to know that to this day the site of 
the wall still determines the route of London streets, 
and still commands an additional and special price in 
city contracts where excavations have to take place. 
The question as to when the walls were built, when 
London, therefore, assumed its position of largest 
Roman city in Britain, is much disputed. The most 
important evidence consistently points to an early 
construction, late in the first century or early in the 
second, and the famous passage in Tacitus, read 
insufficiently by most scholars, of the massacre 

1 Dr Haverfleld in Archcuologia,vo\. lx. p. 43. 



46 



LONDON 



by Boudicca, following the tactical surrender of 
London by the Roman general Suetonius, supplies 
the keynote. This passage contains two important 
statements for consideration. First, there is the 
Londoner's love for the place ; secondly, there is the 
hesitation of Suetonius as to his defence of it. Both 

these statements must 
be considered in the 
light of the acknow- 
ledged meagreness of 
Tacitus' military infor- 
mation. They indicate 
a definitely organised 
community, not a 
mere collection of mer- 
chants' booths, unde- 
fended even from the 
natives who had not 
yet been entirely con- 
quered. Such careless 
ways were not usual 
with Roman merchants 
nor with the Roman state. The strategical value 
of London must have transferred her from a Celtic 
stronghold to a Roman defensive post. Her commer- 
cial value revealed itself so quickly upon this transfer 
that she developed as modern cities develop in newly 
colonised countries before our eyes. The Roman 
general had to face the problem of a Roman camp on 
the Thames front, surrounded by mercantile buildings 




Roman tower in the Wall near Bishopsgate. 




LOK L> OK 

.'/„ /„!.- /OS ,-,l Jil>f/l"f M//. . >/"V I . ijl/l /t lltf//ll f /<<>f" ffo* '■■'/'■"//■ />"" / .'/l"K/'"Hj. 

.,,!.- n// th.ii ii i. /<:,,,'< ii "/, fo'it^./iiilt i/f l.oxnox lit/./ which tvat t»n/iitur>> Mu'trn Jtt&atit* 
„ii.< y/iri jilrfi . .'// iifi/inil.i ir /nut /ft H <>"' tf/Ae 'tint /■"'" r ■• '■' Hti"/i tfiufrtt.e/ ir/m/i 
then i, ,,,./,/. in/ i" miiifiiii/ i/i.'tanif.i. l/,s <J minus iin.iiiiiiii. V/iii/iii -ii Hit 

//,,,!, ,,,;. „/'//,,■ /!„// . Frr thr /i.,rfi,-,i/tu ,;■„,„■ ,?■//„ Wall.ste Kwuath* Iterator. 
/>.:-> .v.,? v i-i/t tjrJTSmM 1/ Mt/t* /}h,M/w .(1 Mart,*, /..„.. 



A PORTION OF OLD LONDON WALL ON LUDGATE HILL. 
Brought to light by a fire in 1792. 



ROMAN ORIGINS 47 

on the land side. This is the interpretation to be put 
upon the meagre sentences of the great Roman his- 
torian in order fully to account for the facts — the love 
of the citizens for the place which was being left to the 
enemy, the hesitation of the general as to making his 
defence at London. There could have been no love 



A portion of Braun and Hogenberg's map of London, showing the 
Roman tower in the Wall. 

for the place — loci dulcedo — unless it had developed 
into a home for soldier and merchant ; there would 
have been no hesitancy but for the fact that London's 
defences were in some sort of form for defence. 
This double point of view enables us to consider the 
first Roman London as a camp which had grown 
into the nucleus of a city, with attractions and 
beauties of its own, and to consider the expansion to 



48 LONDON 

the greater Roman London, which took place rapidly 
and effectively, as the cause both of its military 
unfitness for defence in a.d. 61 and of its mercantile 
fitness for enlargement. There were thus two 
Roman Londons — the defended nucleus arising out 
of the original camp, and the extended city identified 
by its walls. 1 The first site is even to this day 
represented on the map of the city by a rectangular 
block intersected by straight streets, north and south 
and east and west, enclosing an area about that of a 
legionary camp, and containing London Stone, with 
its interesting traditions. More than this, there was 
a definite constitutional boundary of this area, for 
the discovery in the bed of the Walbrook of a 
boundary mark used by the Roman surveyors 2 can 
only point to such a conclusion. It is not possible 
to determine precisely which of the boundaries of 
the inner city suggested at various times by different 
authorities is the correct one, but there can be little 
doubt that within the true boundary was the Roman 
London which was loved by its citizens in a.d. 61. 
It passed away into the larger Roman London, but 
even so, the evidence of its former existence is 
consistent with Roman ideals, for, as Mr Reid 
reminds us, " in the imperial age cities were fond of 
reviving ancient memories." 3 It was retained in the 

1 I have worked this point out in my Governance of London, pp. 
75-87. 

2 Vict. Hist, of London, pp. 42, 82. 

3 J. S. Reid, Municipalities of the Roman Empire, p. 313, and see 
p. 235 for an example of the dual origin of a city. 




Part uf 

L O s 3> O v W A L L. 

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■ // ■ ' I /, /, //,/// //.- //>« ///<]/,////. /!),,/ .Jl'i" ■ 

/..,.. /:;/( ttrZ/Amu-ri-ft/.A '■>//« ///■■.,/ /,.;/,,,/'././ /,,«/ ,.//,/ »/ .'S/f />,/,//,/ Arm ///, 
r/trittt'f /, //•/ /»// /y /// ./,,,///, „/,,,/ ,. j,4f /,,, 

/,.i»»i in// /■./.,/.../ /••,•/, ,i/,„/ ,/„ /,,.,; '//,,. '*//,!,, ,,.■ ,.,„ ./,., /■„;,// /// //,, 7, hi...,,. 
,',.//,, >'/, „.■,..■ ./,-./ ' .J/,/./y //',,, ,1/1,//,, '////,.■ .'/,', m/,/ //"• Yr,j, ,/,t.i;>>* ri' '',,//'/.'"/,/,- 

.J-., .■%,.,,,,, ./// ,/,,./,,,„/„/,//, ,■/ ,,'/„,/;,• ///, /run/, /', // /"t'/i/i 
J, ■,///,, ,l„.'/.j ,:>,,.„.• /,.r.i . / /// '/f;/// ,//./// '/', /:/,/ A' I't /,/,, ,,,,,/ /<//■/ trv// ///. /,,,,/■ 
.,'. ...y.,J. ■ />'.;. ../.a, „,„• />,,/,/,/.,/„/, jf,. s,,^., x ,..„ f „. , fi,,,^, £ - „, 

P* Kantnu £sm 

PART OF LONDON WALL in the Churchyard of St. Giles, Cripplegate. 
F<om an engraving published in 1792. 



ROMAN ORIGINS 49 

earliest ages perhaps by a religious significance, for 
the Romans worshipped in this fashion, but that it 
should be retained at all is remarkable testimony to 
the persistence of historical evidences. 

We have more concern with the greater Roman 
London. The difference between the first London 
and this second London is expressed by the change 
of name. When Tacitus first brings London into 
history it is a mere " locus." During its Roman 




Roman balance, bronze, found in London Wall, in the Guildhall Museum. 

history it drops the Celtic name of London and is 
endowed with the great name of Augusta. The 
significance of such facts scarcely needs elaboration. 
Augusta was one of the recognised great cities of 
the Roman Empire. It was possessed of two very 
important features — the bridge which, spanning the 
Thames, gave it easy access to the south, instead of 
an almost impossible access, and the roads which 
connected it with the entire continental system of 
roadways. One must always bear in mind these 



50 LONDON 

roadways. They were not British roads. They 
were not even Roman roads in Britain. They were 
the roads of the Roman Empire, constructed for all 
the purposes of the Empire — military, commercial, 
social. They all started, not in Britain, but at Rome. 
They entered and traversed Gaul, reaching the coast 
at Gesoriacum (Boulogne). They began again in 
Britain at Dovernum (Dover), and the connection 
between the roads in Britain and those on the Conti- 
nent is clearly stated in the Antonine 
itinerary. London by their means was 
fully and completely brought within the 
Empire, sharing with all the other cities 
the glories, the peace, and, in the end, 
the misfortunes of the Empire. 

We shall presently see how this works 
out, but in the meantime we go on to 
note that a Roman city was not wholly 

Roman key, iron, 

in Guildhall contained within its defending walls. 

Museum. ... , ... 

The cities of Italy were each a miniature 
Rome, and we want to know whether cities beyond 
Italy, the cities in Britain, were also planned in this 
way. The historian Gildas implies that they were 
(cap. v.). Gibbon describes the facts which lead him 
to the same conclusion, 1 and all history seems to point 
in this direction. Mr Reid in his recent volume of 
lectures 2 gives complete evidence on the general 

1 Gibbon, Decline and Fall of Roman Empire (edit. Bury), vol. iii. 
pp. 353-355. 

2 J. S. Reid, Municipalities of the Roman Empire, p. 14 (adorning 




ROMAN ORIGINS 51 

aspect of this subject. The remains of the Roman cities 
also give the same evidence, for even after destruction 
we can always find our way to the forum (in London 
generally accepted as on the site now occupied 
by Leadenhall), the temple, and the 
amphitheatre ; and Silchester, Caerleon, A A 

Wroxeter, Cirencester, and other sites lj 

bear testimony to this universality of 
type. Although I am afraid I must 
surrender to Dr Norman my suggestion *"* 

that the Bear Garden in Southwark 
was the site of the London am phi- I 
theatre, 1 I at the same time point out 
that the trident found there is not 
the only indication in London of the 
Roman sport. A second trident has M 
been found in Southwark, namely, in 
Stoney Street, 2 itself a remarkable sur- 
vival from Roman London ; while the 
inscription to a Retiarius in Greek, jf 
found at Islington, 3 but probably com- R?man pincers> 
ing from another find-spot in London, ESJ'MuseSn?*" 
belongs to the same group. 

The importance of this class of objects is con- 
firmed by the constitutional evidence that the auth- 

the city to imitate the grandeur of Rome) ; p. 20 (town planning) ; 
p. 127 (copying the institutions of Rome). See also Mr Hardy's 
Roman Laws and Charters, pp. (ii.) 13, 64, 1 14. 

1 See Governance of London, p. Q5. 

2 Catalogue of Guildhall Museum, p. 58. 

3 Arch,, vol. xi. p. 48. 



52 



LONDON 




NIAMAPTIA 
AWTQ ANAPI 




Retiarius found at Islington. 



ROMAN ORIGINS 53 

orities of the cities and the forces of government must 
also have corresponded to the Roman form. The 
settlement of the colonia was on the same principle 
in Britain as elsewhere. 1 The one reference to Britain 
in the Theodosian code gives fortunate evidence 
that the decurions of the cities existed as in other 
parts of the Empire (lib. ii., tit. vii. 2), and inscrip- 
tions confirm this. 2 Another inscription refers to the 
publicani of the province, 3 indicating that London was 
a centre of financial administration. And finally, the 
Emperor Honorius addressed his famous letter, sever- 
ing Britain from the Roman Empire, to the cities of 
Britain, and this could not have been done unless these 
cities had been Roman in the fullest sense of the term. 
As in other parts of the Empire, the cities, not the 
provinces, were the government centres, and it was to 
these city-states that the Emperor turned when he 
left Britain to her fate. On these grounds we are 
justified in depicting the Roman cities of Britain as 
miniatures of the mother city on the Tiber, and in 
depicting London as the best of such miniatures. 

If this is so, London had its pomerium, the open 
sacred belt of land all round the city, and its territorium, 
the extensive tract which was its food -ground, its 
villa space, its playground, and its sporting-ground. 4 

1 Tacitus, Annals, xii. 31. 

2 See C.I.L., Nos. 54 and 189, referring to Gloucester and 
Lincoln. 

3 C.I.L., No. 1235, and see Dr Haverfield in Journ. Roman Studies, 
vol. i. p. 151. 

4 See maps in my Governance oj London, pp. 88, 96. 



54 LONDON 

There are no material proofs of these dating from 
Roman times, though Mr Montagu Sharpe has gone 
far to prove that the Roman plotting of the fields in 
Middlesex can still be traced. 

Complete proofs of these and other constitutional 
matters, however, come to us from what was left over 
after the break-up of Roman times — remnants so great 
and significant as to form definite parts of city organisa- 
tion in these later times, and yet not to be accounted 
for or explained by the facts presented by these later 
times, nor indeed in anything in the history in which 

they become em- 
bedded. History 
cannot deal with 
institutions situ- 
ated in this way, 

Roman scale beam, bronze, found at Austin IOr institutions OO 

Friars, in the Guildhall Museum. , • , 

not come into ex- 
istence at the precise date when their recorded history 
begins. They come into history from a previous un- 
recorded period ; and we shall have to note this in 
a somewhat special manner throughout the entire 
range of our inquiry. That it is possible to note it 
so early, in connection with Roman London and not 
with the Celtic stronghold of London, points to this 
period as the true commencing stage of that con- 
tinuity in London history with which we are now 
concerned. 

It is not necessary to deal with these remains 
further at this stage. They have been discussed 




ROMAN ORIGINS 55 

elsewhere, and are fairly well known. 1 But there 
are other remains which tell us of the Romanisation 
of London in quite a different manner, eloquent 
fragments from the past, speaking to us through the 
mist of centuries in a language which belongs to 
our common humanity. One such fragment comes 
very closely into touch right at the beginning, for 
it is not only a message out of the past, but a living 
message. It is a tile from a bonding course in the 
city wall, dug up in Warwick Lane, and bearing a 
rude inscription which Dr Haverfield happily trans- 
lates into " Augustalis goes off on his own every 
fortnight." 2 Augustalis was obviously a criticised 
personage in Roman London, and someone, a wag 
of a workman no doubt, noted down what he, in 
common with his descendant of to-day, was in the habit 
of doing. And he noted it in the Latin language. 
The language of Roman London then, at least as low 
down as the skilled artisan class, was Latin. Now a 
Roman city talking Latin was a Roman city through 
and through. The sons of Roman mothers were 
there. Roman aspirations, Roman ideals, Roman 
thought were there, with the language which came 
to them from the great mother city on the Tiber. 
London intended to be true daughter city to the 
great mother, a city of the Empire, with the Empire's 
methods of doing what was before her to do. 

The costume was Roman, for sandals, almost as 

1 See Governance of London, pp. 96-107. 

2 Journ. Roman Studies, vol. i. p. 168. 



56 



LONDON 



perfect as when in use, and presenting some of the 
best forms and patterns, 1 have been found among the 
buried remains, as well as on the ship which met its 
fate on the shore of the Thames nearly opposite 
Horseferry.' 2 Personal ornaments of interesting types 
are numerous, and some are beautifully designed, 
among which may be mentioned a bronze fibula of 
peculiar shape, bearing traces of sil- 
vered and enamelled ornamentation, 
armlets chiefly in bronze and some in 
gold, two being dug up in Cheapside 
of remarkable beauty, a variety of 
jet objects, hair-pins, brooches, and 
other fibulas of many types. One 
of the most interesting of the toilette 
implements is a strigil or bath scraper 
found upon the site of the Royal 
Exchange, used for scraping the 
skin after gymnastic exercise. All 
such objects and their fellows, not 
Roman key, bronze, in to be enumerated here, but many of 

Guildhall Museum. . 

them to be seen in the Guildhall 
Museum, indicate the nature of the domestic life of 
Roman London. 

More significant than all the material remains, 
so significant as practically to embrace the whole 
essentials of Roman life in London, is the fact that 




1 Roach Smith, Illustrations of Roman London, pp. 131, 132. 

2 Ship of the Roman Period discovered on Site of the County Hall, 
p. 14. 



ROMAN ORIGINS 



57 




Domestic altar found in 
London. 



Roman London worshipped in the Roman fashion. 
Roman worship was dual, that which belonged to 
the house and the family, and 
that which belonged to the city 
and the citizen. The house re- 
ligion, to which members of the 
Roman household alone were 
admitted, is represented by a 
small altar in coloured marble, 
three inches square, found in the 
Thames near old London Bridge. 1 

The city religion is re- 
presented by the altar 
of Diana found under 
Goldsmiths Hall in 
Foster Lane.' 2 There 
are two other religious 
cults in London, that 
of the Dea? Matres, 
represented by a sculp- 
tured fragment dis- 
covered in Hart Street Crutched Friars, 3 and that 
of Mithra, represented by an altar-piece found in the 
Walbrook.* We have thus in London the Roman 

1 Roach Smith, Illustrations, p. 48, with woodcut illustration. 

2 Ibid., p. 48, plate ii. 

3 Ibid., p. S3, with woodcut illustration. This cult is discussed 
hy H. C. Cootein Folklore, vol. iii. pp. 117-128, and in Archceologia, 
vol. xlvi. pp. 171-186. 

4 Haverfield, in Journ. Roman Studies, vol. i. p. l6'3, and plate 
xxiv. ; Cumont, Mysteries of Mithra, pp. 57-60. 




Fragment of group of Matronoe found 
in Hart Street Crutched Friars. 



58 LONDON 

family religion, the Roman city religion, and two 
acquired religions, a combination the importance of 
which may be appreciated by the study of Mr 
Warde Fowler's work on Roman religion. Perhaps 
the evidence of the family religion is in this case 
the more important, for in this cult, revealed by the 




Mithraic relief found in London. 

indestructible evidence of the sculptured stone, we 
have proof that the Romans who settled in London 
brought with them the religion upon which their 
lives were founded, and not merely an official and 
perfunctory religious ritual half believed in by many 
and not believed in at all by the rest of its votaries. 
The worship of the Dea? Matres and of Mithra was 



ROMAN ORIGINS 



59 






founded on a different principle, and the fact that 
London became possessed of these advanced cults 
illustrates how closely she was in touch with the 
progressive forces of the Empire. 

We may now ask what was the predominant 
worship in Roman London. Undoubtedly it was 
that of Diana, for the cult 
evidence of this goddess in- 
cludes not only the altar, 
but other finds connected 
with the worship. These 
additional elements do not 
occur in connection with 
any of the other Roman 
deities worshipped in Lon- 
don, and I think this is due 
to the fact that Diana- 
worship practically absorbed 
the religious expression of 
London. It will be neces- 
sary to examine the details 
of these additional finds with 
some care. 

The altar was recovered, as we have seen, from the 
foundations of Goldsmiths Hall. It was connected 
with strongly cemented masses of stonework. It is 
figured in Archceologia (vol. xxiv.), and bears in bas- 
relief the figure of Diana with bow and quiver and a 
hound at her feet ; on the sides of the altar is sculp- 
tured a tree, and upon the back is rudely sculptured a 




■■.■CTWfta 

Altar to Diana. 



GO 



LONDON 



tripod and sacrificial implements. There is evidence 
of an inscription on the back of the altar, and it has 
even been asserted that the letter V for " Venatrix " 
was discoverable, but this is far from certain. Now 
these details are important. The altar was clearly 

used for sacrifice or sacrifice 
would not be indicated. And 
the sculpturing of the tree 
indicates a rite belonging to 
the cult of Diana. Further, 
there is this important fact, 




1 * C '- _jjf^ 




the figure of Diana on the 
altar has the same general 
characteristics as statues of 
the Gra?co-Roman age. Mr 
Farnell has figured and de- 
scribed one of these from 
Dresden. 1 The London 
sculpture has the short tunic 
of the Roman type, while 
the Dresden statue has " the 
long Doric double chiton 
that falls in austere folds down to the feet " ; 
but with this exception, the figures are remarkably 
alike. From the position of the arms and hands in 
the Dresden statue "it is clear that she was holding 
the bow in a peaceful way against her left side, and 
her right hand was raised to the quiver." This is 

1 Farnell, Cuts of the Greek Stales, vol. ii. plate xxxv. (U), and 
p. 546. 



Altar to Diana, back view. 



ROMAN ORIGINS 



61 




precisely the interpretation which explains the 
London sculpture, the bow in her left hand being 
particularly noticeable. It is also like the Diana 
Venatrix in the Louvre. 

Malcolm, quoting from a manuscript dissertation 
of Dr Woodward, relates the discovery, to the south- 
west of the Cathedral, between the 
Deanery and Blackfriars, of a bronze 
statuette of Diana, two and a half I 
inches high, in the habit of a huntress, 
with elaborately plaited hair and 
carrying a quiver. The image is 
thus described : " An icunculus of 
Diana made of brass and two inches 
and a half in height. It is in the 
habit of a huntress unquestionably 
ancient and of Roman make. The 
hair is very handsomely plaited, made 
up into a wreath, passing on each 
side the head and collected into two 
knots, a larger at the top and a lesser 
behind the head. The arms are both 
bare and quite naked. At her back, 
towards the right shoulder, hangs a quiver, tied on 
by a fascia passing over that shoulder by the breast 
under the left arm round to the back. In the left 
hand has been a bow, in the right an arrow. The 
habit is shortened and girt up about her waist 
after the manner of the cinctus Gabinus, while it 
reaches not quite to her knees below nor to the hams 




Altar to Diana, 
side view. 



62 LONDON 

behind. On the feet are the hunting buskins, extend- 
ing over the ankles up to the lower part of the calf of 
the leg." 1 

These discoveries establish the fact of Diana-worship, 
and the next point is the character of that worship. 
One almost universal element in the worship of the 
Greek Artemis, and her counterpart the Roman Diana, 
is the sacrifice of stags, and therefore the discovery of 
stag bones in great quantities is an important fact. 
The discovery has long been a matter of dispute, but 1 
think on insufficient grounds. Stow says definitely 
that " there were found more than an hundred scalpes 
of oxen or kine in the yeare one thousand three 
hundred and sixteene," 2 and he had good evidence for 
this. Wren declares that he discovered in his excava- 
tions for the new cathedral nothing that would confirm 
this statement ; 3 but Bagford says " that on the south 
side of the church of late days, since the fire at the first 
beginning to build St Paul's church, there were found 
several scalps of oxen and a large quantity of boars' 
tusks, with divers earthen vessels, especially patera?, 
that were of different shapes." 4 This is confirmed by 
Dr Woodward, who, in Wren's time, had collected 
specimens from this find. The following extract 
describes this collection : " Particularly the Ingenious 
Dr Woodward acquaints us, that he has in his Collec- 

1 Malcolm, Londinium Redivivunt, vol. iii. p. 509, from a MS. by Dr 
Woodward, the correspondent of Wren. 

2 Stow's Survey (edit. Kingsford), vol. i. p. 333. 

3 Wren, Parentalia, 1750, pp. 265-267. (See Appendix II.) 

4 Bagford, Letter to Hearne in Leland's Collectanea, vol. i. p. lxvii. 



ROMAN ORIGINS 63 

tion Tusks of Boars, Horns of Oxen and of Stags, 
as also the representations of Deer, and even of 
Diana her self, upon the Sacrificing Vessels digged 
up near St Paul's Church ; and likewise a small 
Image of that Goddess, found not far off. Now it 
appears from ancient Writers, that not only Stags, 
but Oxen, and Swine also, were sacrificed to Diana." * 
This seems to me quite conclusive, and it exactly fits 
the conditions of a classical example which Dr Rouse 
quotes for the same purpose as mine, namely, the 
antiquity of the custom with which it is in close 
contact. " Evidence has at last been found of the 
antiquity of these customs," says Dr Rouse with 
reference to the worship of Artemis in Greece, " in 
the temple of Artemis at Lusi, where have been found 
stags' horns with boars' tusks and the teeth of bears 
in numbers, apparently the relics of early offerings." 2 
It looks very much as if Dr Woodward's collection 
included examples of temple objects similar to the 
finds in Nicholas Lane, and this suggests an inquiry 
as to the probable site of the temple of Diana. An 
interesting description and illustration of an ancient 
lamp by Knight, the biographer of Erasmus, is, I 
think, the starting - point. " Since we have been 
speaking of St Paul's Church, it may not perhaps be 
unacceptable to the Curious, if we here present them 
with the Picture of an Earthen Lamp, which was 
found in digging the Foundation of this Church. It 

1 Knight's Life of Erasmus, p. 302. (See Appendix III.) 

2 Rouse, Greek Votive Offerings, p. 50. 



64 



LONDON 



&nr£&n£ie#t£Lj amp /bT^KtzM-nt/^^^J^aut/j 




Roman lamp found in London, from Knight's Life of Erasmus. 






ROMAN ORIGINS 65 

represents the Figure of a Building, which the late 
Mr Kemp, into whose hands this Lamp came, 
supposed to be the Temple of Diana. And he was 
more confirm'd in this Opinion, from another Lamp 
of the same sort, which was found in the same place, 
and at the same time with the former, together with 
several Boar Tusks {Monument, Kemp, par. 1, pp. 179, 
180). . . . The Prospect of the Building, as here 
represented, must have been taken from the South 
side of the River, as is plain from the largness of the 
human Figure standing there. The shape of the Boat 
on the River is not unlike one published by Bayfius, 
which, he saies, was drawn from an Antient Monument. 
The Lamp it self, being but ordinary Work, makes 
the Building less correct and accurate. I offer it 
therefore but as a Conjecture, and leave it to those 
who are better versed in such Antiquities, to judge 
of it as they please ; and whether from the Form it 
may appear more likely to be a Roman or a British 
Building. I shall only add, that 'tis no Objection to 
its being a Temple, because the Front looks to the 
South : since we are told by Vitruvius, that altho' 
Temples ought generally to be built, when the Situa- 
tion of the Place will admit of it, with their Front 
Westward ; yet when they are placed by Rivers, they 
should look toward the Bank, as those did in Egypt, 
which were near the Nile (Vitruvius, lib. iv. cap. 5) ; 
and as the Building here does on this Lamp, the 
Draught of which was communicated to me by the 

Learned Mr Ward, Rhetorick Professor of Gresham 

5 



66 LONDON 

College. To whom I must own my self obliged for 
the first Knowledge of this Curiosity, as well as his 
Ingenious Conjecture concerning it." 1 

The Victoria History of London records this find, 
and reproduces the engraving of it at the half-size, 
pointing out that " the figure on the bank is really 
handling a net and is not a soul waiting to be ferried 
over the Styx by Charon." 2 This is the representa- 
tion of a fishing incident which has already been 
compared with the Roman worship of the Celtic god 
Lud at Lydney, and which forms perhaps the closest 
direct connection with that cult. 

There are other remains which have been classified 
as belonging to temple buildings. The most im- 
portant was discovered by Sir Christopher Wren, 
and described as follows in his Parentalia : 

"The parochial church of St Mary le Bow in 
Cheapside requir'd to be rebuilt after the great 
fire. . . . Upon opening the ground a foundation was 
discern'd firm enough for the new intended fabrick, 
which (on further inspection after digging down 
sufficiently and removing what earth or rubbish lay 
in the way) appear'd to be the walls, with the windows 
also and the pavement, of a temple or church of 
Roman workmanship intirely buryd under the level 
of the present street ... to range with the street- 
houses of Cheapside, to his surprise he sunk about 
18 feet deep through made ground, and then imagin'd 

1 Knight's Life of Erasmus, p. 301 and pp. 302-303. 

2 Victoria History of London, p. 25. 



ROMAN ORIGINS 67 

he was come to the natural soil and hard gravel, 
but upon full examination it appear 'd to be a Roman 
causeway of rough stone close and well rammed 
with Roman brick and rubbish at the bottom for a 
foundation, and all firmly cemented. This causeway 
was four feet thick [the thickness of the Via Appia, 
according as Mons. Montfaucon measur'd it, was 
about three Parisian feet, or three feet two inches 
and a half English]." 1 

If we take the Walbrook as the centre of the 
river-worship of Roman London, together with the 
sites of temple buildings at Goldsmiths' Hall and 
St Mary-le-Bow, there is a considerable area which 
apparently would have been mainly devoted to the 
worship of the gods. It is not, however, too exten- 
sive to meet the facts. It would be much less than 
the total of the independent areas devoted to the 
Christian Church in the city of the Middle Ages 
and of to-day, and it will help us to understand a 
condition of things which will arise when, in the 
next chapter, we shall be discussing survivals. 
London's religion was, as we have seen, a great 
thing under the Celts. It continued a great thing, 
and became a greater thing, under the Romans. 2 As 
a religious centre Roman London makes a special 
appeal to the historian. The appeal has always been 

1 Wren, Parentalia, 1750, p. 265. 

2 The bronze figures of Apollo, Mercury, Cybele, Jupiter, and 
Atys (Roach Smith, Illustrations, plates xv.-xix.) also illustrate the 
character of the religion of Roman London. 



68 LONDON 

neglected — indeed, has scarcely been understood. 
But cities in the ancient world were religious cities, 1 
and to understand early London it is necessary to 
understand its religion. 

Pavements, baths, columns, sculptures are the chief 
signs of the material remains of Roman London. 
These go towards creating the picture, but do not 
create its atmosphere nor its design. Language, 
costume, and religion make the strongest combina- 
tion of evidence upon which to build up the recon- 
structed elements of Roman 
London. Not only was the 
official language Roman, but 
the people's language was 
also Roman. Roman men 
and Roman matrons dressed 

Roman bowl found at Bishopsgate, m a sty l e Q f wn ich the Sandal 

in Guildhall Museum. J 

is the type, although the 
colder climate of Roman London might have de- 
manded something different. If Roman worship 
was continued, not only in the temple, but in the 
house, there was not only a city organisation of the 
Roman type, but also a family organisation of the 
Roman type. If, with this in mind, all the material 
fragments could be gathered together and placed 
in a museum ground in some sort of fashion approxi- 
mating to the original find-spots, there would be 
revealed the presence of a city in Roman Britain 
possessed of a full Roman life, and above all things 

1 Warde Fowler, Religions Experience of the Roman People, p. 225. 





ROMAN ORIGINS 69 

of a full Roman organisation — greatest city in Roman 
Britain, greatest in extent, in wealth, in culture, 
greatest in influence. 

It is important to note one thing more. London, 
in taking up the position of city-state in Britain, 
was only following upon continental 
examples of which Nimes, Aries, and 
Trier are the most famous examples. 
Candidates for the office of Caesar in 
the later Empire fixed their seat of 

Coin of Carausius. 

government as their first great and 

essential act. And the city so selected became the 

Rome of the new Caesar. Much the same happened 

to London. She could not rival the cities of Gaul in 

the position attained under this experience because 

of her island position, but she moved in the same 

direction. 

At this point we come upon events which must 
have happened within this city of Augusta, but failed 
to be recorded by history. There are only spasms 
of light thrown upon the long period 
of four hundred years during which the 
Roman Empire included amongst its 
city-institutions the civitas of London, 
and the loss of Fronto's oration addressed 

Coin of Alectus. 

to Antoninus Pius on the British war 1 
is serious when we have so little. The famous 
story of Agricola by the great historian Tacitus 
only makes regret for the loss the stronger. It 

1 Eumenius, Panegyr. Constantio Ccesari, 14. 





70 LONDON 

is, however, important to note that the Roman his- 
torian, poet, or panegyrist noted events in Britain 
for one purpose, namely, the uprising of a claimant 
to the sovereignty of the Empire. Britain was 
the veritable home of conspiring candidates for the 
purple. They include not only ambitious rebels, 
but great rulers, and London, as its 
coinage shows, is always the centre of 
their doings. Carausius made his head- 
quarters there, and the followers of 
sIl->^ Alectus fought their last fight there. 

Coin of Albinus. «■■■■• ■< i • t» • • i 

Albinus was elected in Britain, and 
the army fought for him before the city of Lug- 
dunum. Lollianus, Victorianus, Postumus, the two 
Tetrici, and Marius are supposed to have assumed 
the purple in Britain. Bonosus, of British blood, 
and Proculus were supported by Britain. Mag- 
nentius, also of British blood, was 
emperor for three years. And in a .^'^'Vv 
later age there are also Marcus, Gratian itf /V 'j|\ 
Municeps, Constantine — an obscure '- ' ^ ; J 
soldier with a great name — and Maxi- '.*S 

i . . -i •,] .1 i Coin of Lollianus. 

mus who were invested with the purple 
by the army in Britain. To have produced men 
of this type Britain must have possessed and pre- 
served the spirit of Empire, and with the spirit 
the outward manifestation of it — all the ceremonial 
formulae which appertained to the dignity of the 
Augustus and the Caesar of the Empire, the Roman 
system of government by the city, Roman laws, 




ROMAN ORIGINS 71 

Roman power and wealth, and above all, the Roman 
political atmosphere. 

Locked up in this Roman city of Augusta there 
are whole masses of constitutional ceremony, laws, 
and practices which become London customs, London 
law, and London usages during the long period 
of history through which we are going 
to work. Because we cannot unlock 
the Roman gateways and get a full 
view of these origins in their every 
form, it does not mean that we cannot r 

Loinot Victorianus. 

get at them at all. These sort of 
things are capable of living on in the minds of 
generations who have succeeded those who actually 
lived under them. They survive the material shell 
in which they were generated, or in which they de- 
veloped, long after it was destroyed. The great fact 
of continued life will restore to a con- 
// , 4*-'>\ siderable extent the home from which 
v,J they have come. It will do more than 
this. It will show the vitality and the 
power they possessed, and it will show 

Coin of Postumus. , 

their enormous utility to those later 
ages unconscious of the question of origins. Origins 
belong to historical science ; institutions are matters 
of present life. The pages of London records are 
strewn with the formula " according to ancient 
custom " — a source of strength through all the ages, 
in all the struggles. And that ancient custom will 
be found behind the gateways of Roman Augusta. 



n% * 



72 LONDON 

There is surely in this state of things a parallelism, 
beyond the formal remains, material and constitu- 
tional, between the city-institution of Rome and the 
city-institution of London. Both developed along 
the lines of city-state, Rome to become mistress of 
the world by conquest and by government, London 
to become mistress of new elements in a new form of 
civilisation. The results are so different that the sense 
of comparison is not apparent. This, however, comes 
not from the results, but from the causes. These are 
so alike that we must recognise their 
common origin in the projection of city 
civilisation beyond the range of the city 
domain into the range of the state 
domain — in a word, we have arrived at 

Coin ot letncus. 

the institution of the city-state. 
There are no new discoveries, no new material 
facts described in this chapter. All the objects 
have been before the archaeological world for many 
years. But they have not been called upon to 
surrender the full story they have to tell. I am 
not satisfied with their museum values, and so 
have endeavoured to find out what living force 
they possess. They mean much in the life of the 
great city, standing for certain aspects of city life 
which did not cease when London was pushed out 
of the Roman Empire. She was a Roman city 
at the beginning of her history in England. We 
shall see her being gradually absorbed into the 
English state, gradually and peacefully, not suddenly 




ROMAN ORIGINS 73 

or forcefully. And absorption did not mean destruc- 
tion. Her position among institutions in England 
was not the position of a city, but of a city-institution. 
These are the essential facts of this earliest stage. 
They must govern the historical consideration of the 
later stages, and they give to Roman London the 
foremost place in her great history. 



CHAPTER IV 

THE SURVIVAL OF THINGS ANCIENT 

The modern city of London in the midst of a larger 

London is the survival of an ancient thing. It is 

the product of history, not of a sovereign power or 

of political statesmanship. It appeals for protection 

to history, and in a mute sort of way the appeal is 

answered. It is the greatest survival in the country, 

not necessarily the most remarkable, but 

(j> n>,, yji,\ certainly the greatest, because, though 

Ap ' > i *J res ting mainly upon custom and tradi- 

*\ -rfi/r tion, it has legal and institutional status. 

*^^s Yt is not improper to make this the 

Coin of Marius. , . . . n . 

starting - point tor an inquiry as to 
whether we should expect to find within this shell 
of survival many internal elements which, surviving 
themselves in a strong form, have helped to preserve 
through the centuries the survival of the shell itself. 
I think this way of stating the position is a good one ; 
but whether it be so or not, the fact remains that in 
the city of London there are more survivals from past 
history than can be found within the compass of any 
other British city, or of any other area in Britain. 
These survivals form an important part of the story 

74 



THE SURVIVAL OF THINGS ANCIENT 75 

of London, and we must examine the nature of them 
before proceeding with evidence of the influence they 
have exerted through succeeding ages. There are 
primary and secondary survivals. Primary survivals 
are those which are identified directly with the 
original, a simple continuation, in a gradually less 
perfect form, of custom, rite, or belief which were 
once living parts of the social organism. Secondary 
survivals are those which are caused by or result 
from an original element in an early social organi- 
sation, but have grown to be something different 
from the original itself because they have gone on 
developing during their period of survival. Roman 
London possesses both these kinds of survivals. 
The primary belong to London as 
essential parts of its Roman life. The * .; . \ 

secondary belong to London as parts \:p 
of its later life derived from Roman r/j 

London. The secondary survivals, by ~ : — *-— 

n , . ! dl Coin of Maximus. 

iar the most extensive as they are the 
most important, supply the evidence for the con- 
tinuity of Roman influences. 

There is, too, a specially Celtic survival which 
appears most strongly in the post- Roman period, 
that period of a hundred years which has been 
neglected by the historian. It is synchronous with 
the uprising of Celticism all over the country, against 
which the historian Gildas wrote so bitterly, and 
which assisted, if it did not produce the strength of, 
the long struggle between Saxon invader and Celtic 



76 LONDON 

Briton. The Roman cities of Britain were, as we 
have seen, left to govern the country by the departing 
Romans. But they could not do it alone. There 
was no cohesion amongst them. They formed neither 
a federated nor a state government. Their fighting 
forces were hopelessly insufficient, as legion after 
legion of the Roman army of occupation passed along 
the roadways, constructed by and for the legions, 
to the ports of embarkation. London must have 
witnessed this terrible sight with a feeling of painful 
bewilderment, for so many of the roadways converged 
upon her — eight out of the fifteen great roadways of 
the province. In their dilemma the cities turned to 
the tribes. The Celtic Britons at the end of the 
Roman period were still tribesmen. They were in 
the mass neither Romanised citizens nor nationalised 
Britons, though attempts have been made by great 
authorities to prove both these conditions. The 
proof of tribalism is contained in many important 
facts. The most important of these facts is that 
after being driven finally into the hills of western 
Britain — Wales, Cumberland, and Cornwall — they 
lived the tribal life in accordance with an elaborate 
system of tribal laws which were codified in post- 
Roman times. They had also a tribal religion, for the 
Christian Church in Wales was tribal in form, as Mr 
Bund has conclusively shown. 1 Of less importance, 
but of great significance, are inscriptions as at Caer- 
went, which show the independent tribal organisation 

1 F. W. Willis Bund, The Celtic Church in Wales. 



THE SURVIVAL OF THINGS ANCIENT 77 

of the Britons acting on occasions in friendly associa- 
tion with the Roman city. The Caerwent stone was 
erected by order of the civitas of the Silures in honour 
of a Roman officer named Tiberius Claudius Paulinus 
in command of the second legion, who had also 
been proconsul of the provinces of Narbonne and 
Lugdunum in Gaul. 1 The tribal organisation of the 
Silures in the third century is here shown to have 
remained untouched by the Roman civilisation of 
the city, though it formed part of the usual Roman 
system of government adopted in lands occupied by 
tribal peoples. 

The cities and the tribes fought the English 
together, and the strangeness of this amalgam of 
wholly dissimilar institutions appears over and over 
again in the personal and political history of the 
period, and above all things in the traditional history 
of the period. Generals, Roman trained, if not 
Roman born, become the heroes of Celtic tribesmen 
whom they led to victory. Celtic chieftains become 
the heroes of the cities when they took up the task. 
It is in strict accord with this that history or tradition 
says of Vortigern that he convoked the citizens of 
London. 2 It is not surprising that the Roman 
Artorius, of whom we are told that he " used to fight 
against the Saxons in company with the kings of the 
Britons, but was himself dux bellorum" developed 

1 This inscription does not appear to have been published. It is 
not given in the C.I.L. 

2 Matthew of Westminster, Chronicle, lib. vi. cap. vii. 



78 LONDON 

into the hero-king Arthur ; or that the Celtic 
Gurthrigernus should, even in his woeful unsuccess, 
become a centre-figure for the contempt of cities. 
The legend or the history of Ambrosius is to the 
same effect. He was son of a Roman 
consul, he rose to greatness after the 
death of the valiant Vortimer, son of 
Gurthrigernus, and became chief among 
the kings of Britain. 

Amidst this material for the making 
of heroic tradition there arises a great 
conception which has nothing to do with 
the personalities of the city's life. There 
is not a single London hero in this tradi- 
tion. It concerns itself entirely with the 
faiths, the hopes, and the culture of the 
city. Separated into fragments by its 
unequal record, it resumes its original 
unity when investigation of it is complete. 
My own experience in working out the 
various phases of research into this tradi- 

Roman pincers, _ * 

iron, in Guild- tion will help to an understanding of 

hall Museum. . . , 

what the tradition is. I began with the 
discovery of the several fragments, treating them as 
independent survivals having no relation to each 
other. Included in these fragments is religious custom 
solemnly carried on year after year in obedience to no 
higher authority than that of custom ; a series of legal 
customs obviously carried on almost under protest in 
obedience to the same authority ; traditions which 



THE SURVIVAL OF THINGS ANCIENT 79 



relate to a lordship exercised by London under a 
" King of London," whose title is repeated in his- 
torical documents and evidence ; traditions which 
relate to a reverence for London in its material 
aspect. We may fairly conjecture that what is to 
be found now are but the very last 
survivals from a much larger body. 
My next stage of research was 
the discovery of connecting links 
between all these apparently dis- 
connected fragments. Then I dis- 
covered, further, that a certain 
group of these fragments of London 
tradition came to us not from 
London herself, not from Lon- 
doners who had taken upon them- 
selves to record customs and tradi- 
tions, but from Welsh sources. 
The linked-up unity of the separ- 
ated fragments assumed a further 
element of unity in the one source, 
and that a Welsh source, for the 
carrying on of the tradition. The 
last stage in my research was to discover the origins 
of the traditional fragments as a unity, in the religious 
practices, the legal ceremonial, the political instincts 
of ancient Rome. No scholar is likely seriously to 
dispute these various conclusions when they are before 
him at length. He would not suggest that the clergy 
of the early English Church would deliberately select 




Roman pincers, iron, in 
Guildhall Museum. 



80 LONDON 

a known pagan cult for incorporation in the service 
of their cathedral ; that lawyers fresh from a revived 
study of Roman law at the great school at Abingdon, 
or in the monastic establishments, would deliberately 
copy the practices of the Roman forum or of the 
Roman religion in its corporate form ; nor would he 
suggest that the Welsh agency for carrying on the 
tradition prevents the looking back to Roman origins. 
There is no room for surmises that would 
deny to such evidence the value of an 
archaeological discovery, and he must look 
to Roman Londinium for the source of 
that discovery. 

We will pause for a moment at an in- 
teresting place-name which occurs in the 
boundary of the Tower, temp. Richard II. 
Roman key, The entry describes this boundary as 
GundhaiiMu" " from the water side unto the end of 
Pety Wales to the end of Tower S treete. " ' 
The name Pety Wales may be a corruption from a 
name wholly unconnected with Wales, but in view of 
the survival outside of the place-name of Walworth it 
does not seem extravagant to class the city name also 
as a survival. That it had a recognised position is 
shown by early documents. A grant dated 22nd 
January 1353-4 by " Joan Potyn, widow of Gilbert 
Potyn of Petit Wales hard by the Tower of London," 
relates to tenements and quay and other " appurten- 
ances in the parish of All Saints Berkynggechirche 

1 Archceologia, vol. xviii. p. 280. 




THE SURVIVAL OF THINGS ANCIENT 81 

in the lane of Petit Wales." Another grant, dated 
Christmas 1397, is a demise " of a house or mansion 
situated to the eastward of the said Thomas's wharf 
in Petit Wales in the parish of All Hallows Berkyng- 
chirche hard by the Tower of London." A third deed 
dated 20th December 1424 is a grant of "two tene- 
ments with adjoining quay and appurtenances situate 
in Petit Wales Street." L Stow mentions this district 
of Petty Wales, and records an additional fact of im- 
portance, and then proceeds to state a tradition. The 
additional fact is that " towardes the east end thereof, 
namely over agaynst Galley Key, Wooll Key, and 
the Custome House, there have beene of olde time 
some large buildings of stone the ruines whereof doe 
yet remaine." Then comes the tradition : " The 
common people affirm Julius Caesar to be the builder 
thereof. Some are of another opinion, and that a 
more likely, that this great stone building was some 
time the lodging appointed for the Princes of Wales 
when they repayred to this citie . . . and where the 
Earles of Briton were lodged without Aldersgate the 
streete is called Britaine Streete." 2 It will be said at 
once that such a tradition is worthless, but let it be 
considered side by side with the general Welsh 
character of London tradition and it will be found 
entirely consistent with all that is known of the 
position of London in post-Roman and Celtic times. 
In particular it reveals clear relationship to that king- 

1 Hist. MSS. Com., Various Collections, vol. iv. pp. 335-337. 

2 Stow's Survey (edit. Kingsford), vol. i. p. 136. 

6 



82 LONDON 

ship of London which in tradition shows Welsh kings 
deriving power from " the crown of London " and 
paying tribute to "the King of London," and in 
historical documents shows the King of London to 
be subordinate only to the King of the English. 

The conclusion is inevitable, namely, that the 
tradition of London arose amidst the doings of the 
century during which the history of London was 
so strangely silent. It reveals the Celt turning 
in his distant homes, during his hard struggle for 
political existence, towards London as to the centre 
of all movement political and military, always to- 
wards London and to no other city in Britain. It 
shows, further, the wonderment of the Celtic tribes- 
man for the buildings of the great city, buildings 
constructed by giants, and for the wealth that is con- 
tained in these buildings. The wonderment of the 
Celt is the measure of his traditions about London, 
the expression of his belief in giant builders is the 
measure of his ignorance of such buildings. 

And then, finally, there is the tradition of a strong 
Celtic religious reverence for London, which can only 
be explained by the continued existence under Roman 
guardianship of the old Celtic worship of the god Lud, 
added to the continuous ritual of the Roman worship 
of Diana. To the archaeological evidence of this 
worship, as set out in the last chapter, is to be added 
the historical and traditional evidence of its con- 
tinuance. If this city religion was as strong in 
reality as it appears in tradition it would have left 




THE SURVIVAL OF THINGS ANCIENT 83 

evidence of its vitality. As Friedliinder says gener- 
ally of the religion of the Empire, " not only is the 
persistence in late antiquity of all Greek and Roman 
cults of importance an undisputed fact, but also 
the retention of obscure and local cults, ceremonies, 
usages, and forms which were no longer intelligible is 
amply attested in the case of so many different lands 
that considering this extremely tenacious vitality of 
religious tradition any great or essential diminution 
of it in the course of 
centuries appears on 
the whole inconceiv- 
able"; 1 and he con- 
siders that " belief in 

the gods maintained Roman steelyard, bronze, found at St Mildred's, 

itself for nearly five Pou,try ' in the Guildha11 Museum - 

hundred years against Christianity, by which it was 
finally overwhelmed." 2 As far as Britain is concerned 
this is fully borne out by a remarkable passage quoted 
from a treatise ascribed to Tertullian in which he 
mentions " the districts of Britain untrodden by the 
Romans but subject to Christ." 3 This clearly means 
that the Roman centres retained their Roman 
religious beliefs and observances. The evidence of 
London having been governed by these rules of 
religious changes in the Empire is, I believe, con- 
tained in the transactions of the early seventh century 

1 Friedliinder, Roman Life and Manners under the Early Empire, 
vol. iii. p. 155. 

2 Ibid., p. 102. 3 Ibid., p. 206. 



84 LONDON 

when Bishop Mellitus was turned out of London by 
its pagan citizens, who had a high priest of their 
own. 1 The historian does not state what paganism 
this was, and it has been hastily assumed to have 
been Anglo-Saxon. All the evidence is against such 
an assumption. Neither Eadbald's Christianity nor 
Eadbald's recently rejected Wodenism appealed to 
London, and the antagonism to the influence of the 
Kentish king is most likely to be expressive of the an- 
tagonism of London paganism to the Kentish pagan- 
ism, or of the ancient religion of the Empire at its 
decaying stage meeting in a last struggle the new 
religion which was entering on its mission. There 
are no signs at all of Anglo-Saxon paganism in 
London. The supposition is based entirely upon the 
theory of Saxon dominance of London throughout, 
of which there is no evidence at all. On the other 
hand, there are many signs of Roman paganism, and 
their final form is surely in the St Paul's ceremony 
of the seventeenth century. I have argued, and 
shall argue again, that the ritual of St Paul's down 
to the seventeenth century preserved the actual rites 
of the Roman worship of Diana, and that this 

1 Beda, Hist. Eccles., lib. ii. cap. vi., in 6l6 records that the 
Londoners would not receive Bishop Mellitus, " choosing rather to 
be under their idolatrous high priests, for King Eadbald had not 
so much authority as his father, nor was he able to restore the 
bishop against the will and consent of the pagans." " Mellitum 
uero Lundonienses episcopum recipere noluerunt, idolatris magis 
pontificibus seruire gaudentes. Non enim tanta erat ei, quanta 
patri ipsius regni potestas, ut etiam nolentibus ac contradicentibus 
paganis antistitem suae posset ecclesiae reddere." 



THE SURVIVAL OF THINGS ANCIENT 85 

reveals a religious strength whieh back in the ages 
must have told strongly for the conception of 
London as the mother city of both tribal Celt and 
Romanised Briton. 

I am aware that at present this view of the 
tradition of London is not clear, and that the proof 
of it has still to be worked out in detail, but I hope 
soon to publish my proof in a separate study. Clas- 
sical students are fully conscious of the value of city 
traditions, as Mr Leaf has recently shown in his 
study of Troy, and the London tradition is not less 
expressive. It will be a new epoch in London 
history. It will show that London during the 
Celtic revival was great beyond Welsh conception, 
because of the magnificence of her Roman life, and, 
above all things, because she was the centre of a 
Celtic religious cult. This double stream of Celtic 
tradition, plainly discernible in forgotten and un- 
heeded survivals both of belief and ritual, places 
Roman London in an altogether unique position, 
makes of her an institution outside the tribal con- 
ceptions both of Celt and Saxon, and gives her 
quietly, through this means, a position which no 
other means could have secured. 

One cannot resist the conviction that this tra- 
dition of London, arising during the great Celtic 
uprising of the fifth century, is the tradition of real 
events — events by which London assumes, or is 
endowed with, the attributes of a city-state. These 
attributes, of course, never became either in origin 



86 LONDON 

or in continuation as the attributes of Rome had 
become in origin and continuation. They were on 
a much more lowly scale. But they were of the 
same order. London exercising certain rights, con- 
stitutional not revolutionary rights, in connection 
with the sovereignty of the kingdom ; London 
using Roman laws in opposition to English law ; 
London possessing in its cathedral ritual of the 
seventeenth century fragments of a Diana temple 
worship, is a city with particularly definite char- 
acteristics. 

London therefore comes from the silent fifth 
century as a living entity by the help of Celtic 
tradition — a tradition which I think includes the 
restoration of the name of London. This name 
had been displaced under Roman rule by the 
honorific name of Augusta, and I have suggested 
that it was retained throughout for the inner city. 1 
It was, I think, restored to the larger London by 
Celtic influence. Palgrave conceals in a footnote 
his opinion of the significance of the restored name 
of London : " the old name must have remained in 
constant use amongst the common people." 2 This is, 
however, meaningless historically. The question is, 
Who were the common people ? The only people 
who could have influence in such a matter at this 
time were London citizens and Celtic outsiders, and 
the latter are the more likely to have brought about 

1 The Making of London, p. 56. 

2 Palgrave, Hist, of Eng. Commonwealth, vol. i. p. 385, note. 



THE SURVIVAL OF THINGS ANCIENT 87 

this interesting restoration of the ancient Celtic 
name. 

It is in accord with this conception of events that 
the Boudicca tradition should have been preserved in 
the name of " Boadicea's tomb " given to the well- 
known mound on Hampstead Heath. I have else- 
where explained the true meaning of this mound as 
a Roman boundary mound, 1 but the fact that it has 
been used as the locus to mark the one historical 
record of the destruction of London helps us to 
understand the full significance of the absence of a 
corresponding record of destruction in Anglo-Saxon 
times. Whatever history there was to record of 
this period would have been Anglo-Saxon history, 
in speech, in form, in chronicle, or in poem ; and 
Anglo-Saxon history would not have been slow to 
put on record the destruction of London. 2 Anglo- 
Saxon thought went wholly to the destruction not 
to the conservation of cities. In the great poem of 
Beowulf we seem to have English alterations of a 
Scandinavian original, and one of these alterations 
is the most remarkable description of the treasure- 
house which the hero attacked, and which is shown 

1 See my Governance of London, pp. 100-103. 

2 The charming account of Archbishop ^El trie's method of 
historical research makes this certain. " And straightway he sent 
for all the wisest men he anywhere knew of, and also those excellent 
men who could say the truest how everything had been in this land 
in the days of their elders, besides what he himself had learned 
from books and wise men" (Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, anno 995, trans, 
by E. E. C. Gomme). 



88 LONDON 

by Dr Stjerna to be a close description of a Roman 

public building. 1 In the poem preserved in the 

Codex Eoconiensis we have the cry of the barbarian 

destroying a civilisation he did not understand, and 

expressed in the same terms as the Celtic cry of 

misunderstood admiration. Giants, not men, built 

the cities. Ruins of magnificence were the glorious 

results of their undoing. The slaughter of warriors 

innumerable sanctified the proceedings, and the whole 

picture represents a wonderment forced upon the 

successful invader. 

Wonderous is this wall-stone, 

the fates have broken it, 

have burst the burgh-place. 

Perishes the work of giants, 

the roofs are fallen, 

the towers are tottering, 

the hoar gate-towers despoiPd, 

rime on the lime, 

shatter'd the battlements, 

riven, fallen, 

under the Eotnish race ; 

the earth -grave has 

its powerful workmen ; 

decay 'd, departed, 

the hard of gripe are fallen, 

to a hundred generations 

of people are pass'd away. 

Oft its walls withstood 

Raeghar and Readfah, 

chieftain after other, 

rising amid storms. 

1 Stjerna, Arcfuvology of Beowulf) p. 38. (Appendix IV.) 



THE SURVIVAL OF THINGS ANCIENT 89 

Rapidly prone it fell ; 
yet wanes 

drew the swift, 

the bold of purpose in chains, 

proud of spirit bound 

the aliens with wires, 

wonderously together. 

Bright were the burgh-dwellings, 

many its princely halls, 

high its steepled splendour, 

there was martial sound great, 

many a mead-hall 

full of human joys, 

until that changed 

obdurate fate : 

they perisrTd in wide slaughter. 

Came pernicious days ; 

death destroy'd all 

their renown 1 d warriors. 

Their fortress is become 

waste foundations ; 

their burgh-place has perish'd ; 

atoning bow'd 

their bands to earth : 

therefore these courts are dreary, 

and its purple arch 

with its tiles shades 

the roost, proud of its diadem. 

At its fall the plain shrank, 

broken into mounds. 

There manv a chief of old, 

joyous and gold-bright, 

splendidly decorated, 

proud and with wine elate, 

in warlike decorations shone ; 



90 LONDON 

look\l on treasure, on silver, 
on curious gems, 
on luxury, on wealth, 
on precious stone, 
on this bright burgh 
of a broad realm. 
The stone courts stood — 
the stream with heat o'erthrew them 
with its wide burning; 
the wall all encompassYl 
in its bright bosom. 
There the baths were 
hot on the breast : 
that was desolating ! 
Let then pom- 
hot streams, 



This is a great poem. The brute force of it seems 
to beat against one's brain, the admiration and glory 
of the tumultuous deeds it sings of seem to win one's 
very soul. And then somewhere, an unknown some- 
where, perhaps in the halts between word and word, 
sentence and sentence, somewhere between the rugged 
unevenness of each thought, there arises an echo of 
something otherwise, something of regret, shame, at 
the very wantonness of the destruction of things so 
colossal, things so expressive of man's great handiwork, 
not giant's work, after all, but man's. The poem is a 

1 Codex Exontensis, pp. 4? 6-8, edited by Thorpe, whose transla- 
tion has been cheeked by Mr E. E. C. Gomme for the detailed 
word in a;. 



THE SURVIVAL OF THINGS ANCIENT 91 

chapter of Anglo-Saxon history, and the great fact 
about it is that it does not, cannot, belong to the 
history of London. Such a chapter of the city's 
history would have occupied the place now occupied 
so fully by Celtic tradition, and would have sent a 
thrill through all succeeding ages. The thrill never 
comes. It is only dead silence — the silence of a 
hundred years — and such a poem does not come 
from silence. That it answers to no conditions that 
are discoverable about London, to no connection 
with events which belong to London, is proof positive 
that the Saxon did not enter London as Boudicca 
had entered it three and a half centuries agone with 
axe and sword reeking with the blood of slaughtered 
Londoners — did not, in fact, enter London at all as 
conqueror. 

Unfortunately the silence of the Saxon has had 
more influence upon historical inquiry than the 
tradition of the Celt. And yet the silence if read 
by the light of this poem tells the same story as the 
tradition, namely, that London was not within the 
sphere of Anglo-Saxon action. As no one can 
believe that this was the deliberate result of Anglo- 
Saxon policy in connection with their conquest of 
south Britain, it must have been the result of 
necessity. The necessity arose from London's de- 
fence of herself. London kept the Anglo-Saxon 
outside in the open country, and we shall presently 
discuss not only the evidence for it, but the equally 
remarkable evidence which followed the recognition 



92 LONDON 

of London's position in a scheme of national defence 
when the English stood at bay. 

This, then, is the situation we have arrived at by 
the voice of tradition. Unconquered London, un- 
destroyed London, lived on in Celtic thought and 
Celtic estimation for at least a hundred years. She 
herself was full of dismal anticipation of the in- 
evitable as well as of great hopes, and always occupied 
in keeping alive what had come to her from her 
Roman organisation. There is no record of conquest 
or destruction, no evidence of a general conflagration. 
There is nothing but the mere surmise of desolation 
coming out from the silence of history. 

If we consider this position in relation to the group 
of Roman institutions which were kept alive during 
this period, to be used by future generations of people 
who knew nothing of Roman institutions, we shall 
find that there is no room for such a surmise, no 
room, indeed, for any other conclusion than the con- 
tinuity of London from Roman into Anglo-Saxon 
history. If Roman London was not conquered and 
destroyed it could not have been squeezed into the 
small areas of Anglo-Saxon polity. It is an absolute 
impossibility from the institutional side. 

The continuity of Roman London is expressed by 
survivals both of a material and a constitutional kind. 

There is no inherent improbability in the buildings 
of a Roman city remaining intact through the Anglo- 
Saxon dominance where there was no definite destruc- 
tion as at Anderida and Silchester. Thus Giraldus 



THE SURVIVAL OF THINGS ANCIENT 93 

Cambrensis describes the remains of Caerleon which 
were existing in his days, the twelfth century ; 
immense palaces, towers of prodigious size, remark- 
able hot baths, relics of temples and theatres, all 
enclosed within fine walls, parts of which remain 
standing, aqueducts and stoves to transmit the heat. 
Something parallel to this may well have been the con- 
dition of London, and I have urged in a former work 1 
that Alfred looked upon many a Roman building, as 
well as Roman walls and defences, when he took count 
of London in his plan of defence against the Danes. 
This position is supported by evidence which extends 
to modern days in spite of ceaseless and wanton 
destruction and neglect. 2 

Of material remains, situated in the very heart of 
London, the most striking is the complete plan of 
a Roman building that has been discovered under 
Leadenhall market. This is described as of con- 
siderable extent, with the foundation of an apse 
thirty-five feet wide, and it appears to have had 
the form of a basilica in some respects, with an apse 
at each end, western nave, and two chambers, like 
transepts, on the south side. Many of the walls still 
remain buried under the market, and some of them 
have been opened up on more than one occasion. 3 

1 The Making of London, p. 81. 

2 Roach Smith, 1/ lustrations of Roman London, pp. 2-7, quotes 
some pertinent examples of modern destruction of Roman London. 

3 Archceologia, vol. xlviii. p. 245 ; Victoria Hist, of London, pp. 74, 
107; Illustrated Topographical Record of London (Lond. Top. Soc.), 
p. 1 contains an illustration showing "some arches of Roman work." 



94 LONDON 

It has been suggested that these undoubted remains 
of a public building belong to the Roman forum. If 
this conclusion is correct, and there seems no reason- 
able doubt about it, the continuity between Roman 
London and the London even of to-day is expressed 
in the quite remarkable fact that the site upon which 
these remains stand has always been public property, 1 
always the property of the community and never of a 
private owner, 2 always belonging to London, whether 
urbs, civitas, burgh, city — whether Roman, Saxon, 
Norman, or English. A fact of this kind is complete 
in all its aspects, and history cannot produce from its 
archives any record more telling. The Saxon name, 
Leadenhall, is a translation or adaptation from the 
Latin, not a free gift from the English tongue, and 
when the complete lists of Saxon words in use as 
translations from the Latin have been fully examined 
by philologists, Leadenhall will find a not unimpor- 
tant place. It is evident that it signifies to the 
Saxon mind much more than a Saxon building, a 
building, therefore, which must have been standing 
during the period of Saxon dominance, and inherited, 
with its characteristic lead construction, from Roman 
London. Of churches built on Roman sites London 
possesses many examples, 3 in common with other 

1 "Occupied upon a common ground " is Stow's phrase. Kings- 
ford edition, vol. i. p. 156. 

2 Thus the remarkable petition of the citizens in 1519 quoted by 
Stow (Kingsford edition), vol. i. pp. 157-9, protests against "the 
great place called the Leaden Hall" being " letten to farme to 
any person or persons." 3 See my Making of London, p. 93. 



THE SURVIVAL OF THINGS ANCIENT 95 

parts of Britain. The fact is important in many 
ways. A more complete survival of Roman build- 
ing is the square tower which is represented in the 
Aggas map between Bishopsgate and Aldgate, and 
remained nearly intact until 1763, when, fortunately, 
a drawing of it was made by Gough. 1 It shows the 
courses of stones and tiles, and is compared by 
Roach Smith with the towers at Richborough, which 
were built solid at the bottom, hollow in the centre, 
and united to the main wall again at the top, the 
cavity being probably intended for a small room pro- 
vided with loopholes for the watchers. This interest- 
ing survival from Roman times was used as a chamber, 
and a window occupied the place of a loophole. 

The most picturesque of the constitutional sur- 
vivals is the jurisdictional terminus at Mile End. 2 
Colchester and London both possess this feature of a 
Roman city, and in spite of objections to such a con- 
clusion, the fact that Mile End is a military centre 
and a criminal centre at the earliest times recorded 
by history is sufficient to prove the same facts for the 
period before the records of history. The point is 
perfectly plain. These two characteristics are in ex- 
istence when history begins. They have only one 
parallel in the prehistory period, and this parallel 
belongs to Roman institutions. History does not 
give them a beginning, only a record of existence. 

1 This drawing was copied by Fairholt, and is used in C. R. Smith's 
Illustrations of Roman London, p. 16. It is reproduced ante, pp. 46, 47. 

2 See my Governance of London, pp. 1 04-6, for the details. 



96 LONDON 

There is nothing, therefore, between them and the 
Roman institution of which they are survivals. 
This is explained in detail in my Governance of 
London, but, since writing that, further evidence 
from comparative sources is forthcoming in support 
of my interpretation of this significant place-name and 
its association, namely, the existence of a jurisdictional 
boundary in other Roman cities in Britain. The most 
important example is at Silchester. This boundary 
is one mile distant from the Roman walls and 
follows precisely the peculiar irregularity of the 
city, proceeding over level or higher ground with- 
out reference to geographical or natural considera- 
tions. This boundary is to this day the dividing line 
between the Silchester manors and outside manors. 1 
One cannot ignore comparative evidence of this kind. 
If it is conceded for Silchester's unnamed boundary, 
it must be conceded for London's Mile End, which 
is not only a place-name but a military and criminal 
jurisdictional boundary in relation to London. It is 
the first step in the tracing out of the continuity of 
London as a city in arms, and the first step arises in 
Roman London. 

1 I am indebted to Mr J. B. Karslake for this valuable discovery 
not elsewhere noted. Mr Karslake added to the value of his infor- 
mation by driving me round the outside boundary and giving me 
this opportunity of studying it in the field as well as on the map. 
I should like to refer to a parallel line of research in Roman city 
remains, and Dr Frothingham's interesting account of the discovery 
of colony arches at Verona affords me the opportunity, Roman Cities 
in Northern Italy and Dalmatia, p. 251. 



THE SURVIVAL OF THINGS ANCIENT 97 

In connection with this there is another important 
fact. The army that went forth to meet Hengist 
and Msc at Crayford fled to London on being de- 
feated, and I have argued that the army thus sheltered 
was the citizen army of the Londoners, which fought 
at Crayford because it was the limit of the city 
territorium to the south-east. A small point affords 
a useful fact which tells for confirmation of this 
view. The British force which fought at Aylesford 
in 455 is stated to have been commanded by the 
British king, Vortigern. The commander at Cray- 
ford, two years later, is unnamed. There is surely 
a reason for this difference of historical treatment, 
and I think it is to be found in the fact that it was 
the chief citizen who, by virtue of his office, led the 
London army against the foe at London's boundary. 1 

On the same line of argument, the institution of 
the pomerium is alone able to account for the belt 
of city jurisdiction and possession which gives it 
wards without the walls as well as wards within 
the walls. These extra mural wards show that the 
wall of the city is not the boundary of the city. The 
real boundary is jurisdictional not physical — that 
boundary beyond the wall which separates the custom 
of the city from that beyond the boundary, which 
differentiates the land tenure and the succession laws 
of the city from those of the surrounding country, 
which places the citizen within the jurisdictional 
boundary in a position which though constitutionally 

1 See my Governance of London, pp. 97-8. 

7 



98 LONDON 

advantageous is controlled by the city government. 
Protected by no physical methods, such a boundary 
has been preserved throughout the ages by the pure 
force of its jurisdictional value. Later events prove 
this, for when the Danes first settled in London, as it 
is stated in the Chronicles, their settlement was not 
within the walls. If it was within the pomerium 
they were entitled to say it was within London. It 
was their London, and this is what I think explains 
the many conflicting accounts of these events. It is 
confirmed by a curious feature in the boundaries of 
Westminster on its city side. There was an unex- 
plained stretch of territory not included in either the 
city or in Westminster, and which contains evidence 
of Danish influence. 1 If this stretch of territory ad- 
joining the boundary of the city and not within the 
boundary of Westminster was part of the London 
pomerium in which the Danes settled, it would afford 
the only reasonable explanation of all the complicated 
facts of recorded history. Another piece of the 
pomerium may perhaps be traced at Finsbury, where 
the city has possessed rights the origin of which is lost 
in history. Similarly, I believe that the maps of 
London when they are sufficiently examined will 
supply further traces of jurisdictional boundary out- 
side the walls which can best be explained on the 
theory I have advanced. 

The same argument also applies, only with more 
certain evidence, to the institution of the territorium. 

1 See my Governance of London, pp. 191-5. 



THE SURVIVAL OF THINGS ANCIENT 99 

London frequently appears in chronicle and city 
records as a city with " lands which belonged there- 
to," to adopt the words of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, 
history thus recording the bare fact but not the 
origin. It is this kind of record which compels a 
glance at the prehistory period, and there London's 
great church of St Paul's is found to possess exten- 
sive lands all round the city, to be, in fact, as Hale 
expressed it in his Domesday of St Pants, " a corpora- 
tion possessed of manors and churches, and having 
to fulfil to their tenants the same duties, and receive 
from them the same services, as other lords of 
manors." The position of the Cathedral manors is 
important in relation to London. Nine of them 
are at Willesden, while thirteen others — Pancras, 
Rugmere, Totenhall, Kentish Town, Islington, 
Newington, Holborn, Poripool, Finsbury, Hoxton, 
Wenlock's Barn, Mora, and Eald Street — are found 
to occupy a belt of land of no inconsiderable breadth 
from the walls of the city of London towards the 
north. The church in this case, as at Winchester, 
Carlisle, and other cities, became in part the political 
successor of the Roman city, and gifts by will 
bestowed " within London and without London " 
expresses the significance of the situation. 1 Mr Reid 
points out that this same kind of evidence is used 
" in determining the limits of municipal territoria 
in ancient Italy as in other parts of the Roman 
Empire," and adds that "in the latest imperial age 

1 Thorpe, Diplomatarium Anglicum, p. 514. 






100 LONDON 

the bishops acquired supremacy in most of the 
municipalities, and the limits of their dioceses corre- 
sponded very generally with those of the old civic 
territorial' 1 The church did not, however, absorb 
all that was left of the institution of the territorium. 
The city retained territorium rights, though not 
territorium possession. She had sherifan jurisdiction 
over the whole of Middlesex, and, as Mr Round puts 
it, " Middlesex was never separate from London." 2 
She had rights of chase confirmed to her citizens 
by Henry I. "as well and fully as their ancestors 
have had." She held " the moor of London " as her 
own property, and the title used accidentally in 
the records 3 is not without its significance. "The 
whole water of Thames belongs to the city from 
shore to shore as far as the Newe Weare." 4 Rights 
at Staines, rights at Richmond, rights at Crayford, 
rights all round the walled city, which can be 
accounted for only as survivals from the Roman 
institution of the territorium, appear at the beginning 
of recorded history as already ancient. I agree with 
Mr Lethaby that the theory which best fits the facts 
as to the origin of Middlesex is not the creation of 

1 J. S. Reid, The Municipalities of the Hainan Empire, pp. 143, 451 ; 
and see my Governance of London, pp. 106, 223. 

2 Round, Geojfreg of Mandeville, p. 347 et seq. 

3 Riley's Memorials, p. 374 ; Hist. MSS. Com., ix. p. 8, notes a 
grant in 1288 of land in "la more," and in 1315 a release was 
given by the Prebendary of Finsbury of all his claim in " la mora de 
Haliwell et de Finesbiri." 

4 Cronica maiorum et vicecomitum Londoniarum (Camden Soc.), pp. 
40, 62. New Wear was in the neighbourhood of Yantlet Creek. 



THE SURVIVAL OF THINGS ANCIENT 101 

a Middle Saxon folk, with full tribal organisation, 
capable of stamping itself upon English soil, but 
the deduction to be drawn from all late evidence 
— the evidence of mediseval as of Anglo-Saxon 
records — that Middlesex was in fact "the cuntre of 
London," as it is called by Capgrave l in his descrip- 
tion of the western boundary of Essex. 2 This ex- 
pression exactly fits the position. The city and the 
church divided between them the possession and the 
rights over Middlesex. Possession and rights are 
inheritances from some previous conditions, not 
grants from powerful sovereign, not forceful acquisi- 
tions in time of anarchy, but simply inheritance. 
And the only source of this inheritance possible is 
the Roman institution of the territorium. 

The early commercial greatness of Roman London 
— there is no evidence of anything earlier — is 
always admitted. The continuation of this great- 
ness is seen from the historical records. It is Roman 
law, surviving to the Middle Ages almost unaltered 
in practice, though never appearing as a formulary, 
which made this commerce possible. When Henry I. 
framed his great charter to London, he granted the 
right of London to tax other towns as other towns 
taxed London. This was simply confirming a right 
already possessed of forming commercial alliances 
with other cities, a right which is a direct survival 
of the system adopted in Roman towns. 

1 London before the Conquest, p. 123. 

2 Capgrave, Chronicle of England (Rolls edition), p. 100. 



102 LONDON 

Again, in the matter of succession to land. All 
round London, right up to the outer ward boundaries 
of the city, the manor is the land unit. Inside the 
city there is no such thing as a manor. The sokes 
aimed at manorial jurisdiction without the manorial 
organisation, but they never became manors, never 
lived, to quote Mr Maitland's expressive definition 
of the manor, as " a single group of tenants who 
worked in common at their ploughings and their 
reapings." 1 In the extra London manors the succes- 
sion to land was for the most part by junior right or 
gavelkind. Inside the city, succession to land was 
by a formal custom which had for its object the 
settlement of the legal rights of wife and children 
to shares in the property of the husband and father.' 2 
This custom was a restriction upon individual rights 
of the citizen, and as such is clearly traceable to the 
Roman codes. 3 Here the doctrine of survival is 
emphasised by the contrast which is drawn at the 
city boundary between city and extra city land- 
systems. 

These conclusions are forced upon us by the 

1 Select Pleas of Manor Rolls, p. xl. Norden's definition is 
equally expressive : " Is not every manor a little commonwealth 
whereof the tenants are the members, the land the bulke, and the 
lord the head?" {Surveyor's Dialogue, 1607, p. 28). 

2 I have given examples in my Governance of London, p. 139. 

3 Justinian, lib. ii. tit. xviii., is the basis of this comparison 
between Roman and London law. Cf. Ulpian, lib. iii. 1-17, and 
Cod. Theod., ii. 1 9, 4. The modification in the London law of the 
exact provisions of the Roman law does not seem to me to affect 
the question of origins after reading the opening words of Justinian. 



THE SURVIVAL OF THINGS ANCIENT 103 

lawyer rather than by the historian, and the lawyer 
seeks his origins in the realms of applied logic rather 
than in the less fruitful regions of recorded fact. 
Thus in discussing the doctrine of rationabilis pews, 
which is the legitima portio of the Theodosian code 
(ii. 19, 4), Mr Spence says : " In some parts of 
England, particularly in Kent, in London, and in 
York, it appears to have continued in uninterrupted 
succession from the time when Britain was a Roman 
province. It was afterwards extended so as to become 
the general if not universal law of England." 1 And 
he also points out the extremely important fact in 
this connection, that "it is still usual for the city 
of London to plead its franchises, confirmed as they 
have been by parliament, not as royal grants or as 
deriving their force from legislative sanction, but as 
customs existing from time immemorial." Through 
the medium of its local tribunals, many ancient 
customs which were at variance with the general 
law, such as the allodial right of devising lands, the 
claims of the wife and children upon the personal 
estate of their parent under the name of pars ration- 
abilis (" the remains of the old common law," Kemp v. 
Kelsey, Prec. in Ch., p. 596), and the right of appoint- 
ing guardians to orphans by the magistrates of the 
city (4 Inst. 248), " were kept up in London long 
after the conquest. Indeed, the custom of London 
as to the rationabilis pars of the personal estate of 

1 Spence, Equitable Jurisdiction of the Court of Chancery, vol. i. 
p. 188. 



104 LONDON 

a citizen dying intestate, and some other of these 
customs, remain in force in part at least at the 
present day." 1 

London in this respect was doing nothing strange. 
She only followed the general practice which arose 
out of the final break-up of Roman power. Mr 
Story, in his work on the Conflict of Laws, puts 
the point in the following manner : " When the 
northern nations, by their irruptions, finally succeeded 
in establishing themselves in the Roman Empire and 
the dependent nations subjected to its sway, they seem 
to have adopted, either by design or from accident or 
necessity, the policy of allowing the different races to 
live together, and to be governed by and to preserve 
their own separate manners, laws, and institutions in 
their mutual intercourse. While the conquerors, the 
Goths, Burgundians, Franks, and Lombards, main- 
tained their own laws and usages and customs over 
their own race, they silently or expressly allowed each 
of the races over whom they had obtained an absolute 
sovereignty to regulate their own private rights 
and affairs according to their own municipal juris- 
prudence. It has accordingly been remarked, by a 
most learned and eminent jurist, that from this state 
of society arose that condition of civil rights, denomi- 
nated personal rights or personal laws, in opposition 
to territorial laws." The eminent jurist here referred 
to is Savigny, who, in his History of the Roman Law 
in the Middle Ages, speaking of the state of things 

1 Spence, Court of Chancery, vol. i. p. 97 ; Pulling, Customs, p. 6. 



THE SURVIVAL OF THINGS ANCIENT 105 

which existed between the conquering Goths, Bur- 
gundians, Franks, and Lombards, and the races con- 
quered by them, says : " Both races lived together, 
and preserved their separate manners and laws. From 
this state of society arose that condition of civil rights, 
denominated personal rights or personal laws, in 
opposition to territorial laws. ... In the same 
country, and often indeed in the same city, the 
Lombard lived under the Lombardic, and the 
Roman under the Roman law. The same distinc- 
tion of laws was also applicable to the different 
races of Germans. The Frank, Burgundian, and 
Goth resided in the same place, each under his 
own law, as is forcibly stated by the Bishop 
Agobardus in an epistle to Louis le Debonnaire. 
' It often happens, ' says he, ' that five men, each 
under a different law, may be found walking or 
sitting together.' " 1 

These are the outward signs of the survival of a 
Roman city constitution. They are supplemented 
by the far more remarkable survivals of city govern- 
ance and of city-state conditions. The evidence of 
Roman continuity of city governance is contained in 
the antagonism of the Anglo-Saxon to a power greater 
than he was, a power which he had to fight when 
he entered London, and which he never conquered. 
This power was on the side of law and order, on the 

1 Coote's argument for these same conditions in London (Romans 
of Britain, pp. 292-3) is ingenious and very tempting, but it 
depends upon the correctness of the equation, Wyliscean = Roman. 



106 LONDON 

side of an autocratic governing authority, on the side 
of a successful administration, and the Anglo-Saxon 
finds himself up against all this. The next chapter 
will contain the evidence for it. 

The evidence of the survival of Roman city-state 
conditions cannot be contained in a single chapter. 
It comes into every phase, every period, of London 
history, and is contained in the quite remarkable 
constitutional relationship which London has with 
the national sovereign power — not the relationship of 
an overbearing revolutionary capital city during a 
period of revolution in the nation, but the relationship 
of a quiet, determined exercise of influence and action, 
always of the same kind, always tending to the same 
purpose, always having the same effect, always 
exercised by an organised city community. The 
working out of this survival is difficult until the key 
to the problem is supplied, and then the position 
becomes clear enough. It would have been satis- 
factory without the whole of the evidence which is 
happily forthcoming. With that evidence complete 
at so many stages, coming back through the ages in 
terms of an almost traditional formula, sanctioned by 
continuous usage, there is no room to doubt of 
London's exercise of city-state powers, and there is 
no room to doubt that they were directly inherited 
from Roman London and applied by the city 
successors — English, Norman, modern, successors of 
the Romans of London. If London does not, during 
the decay of the Empire, assume a position such as 



THE SURVIVAL OF THINGS ANCIENT 107 

Nimes, Aries, and Trier were allowed — the position, 
that is, of city-state in the Empire, parallel to Rome 
itself — it is certain that it carved out of its Roman 
origin a position for itself in the outer world of 
Britain, a position not altogether unlike that of its 
sister cities on the Continent, though belonging to a 
lesser sphere of operation. The position of the great 
French and Italian cities in relation to national 
politics has not been worked out. When this is done 
it will be found that the independence of London in 
Anglo-Saxon times, and the survivals of this inde- 
pendence which brought about its struggle against 
the mighty powers of English Plantagenet sover- 
eignty, were of the same general kind, and proceeded 
from the same source, namely, the political system 
of the Roman Empire. 1 A parallel of this kind is 
worth much to the student of London. London was 
differently placed, because it was not free from the 
external sovereign. But it was struggling against 
this sovereignty on precisely the same lines as the 
Italian cities were exercising their independent 
powers, and because London was struggling and 
they were free we must not imagine a fundamental 
difference in the position of the English city and the 
cities of the Continent. The common origin from 
which that position was derived is the connecting 
link between them both. 

We shall see in succeeding chapters how the more 

1 On this point it is worth while consulting Gibbon, Decline and 
Fall (Bury), vol. v. pp. 302-3. 



108 LONDON 

important survivals are indeed much more than 
survivals. They are continuations during successive 
ages of history. Each generation of London citizen- 
ship used them as the position of affairs demanded. 
They therefore never retained their purely external 
Roman character. They were Englished or Nor- 
manised or mediasvalised or modernised as demands 
upon them were renewed again and again. It is 
all to the good, therefore, that we find them in 
altered form as survivals. They are survivals plus 
continuations, and the remarkable thing is that they 
retain enough of their original form for the inquirer 
of to-day to be able to identify their internal 
character as survivals. We have by their aid 
established the principle of continuity in the life 
of London, and we have to ascertain whether that 
principle remains in active operation throughout the 
later periods — whether Roman London sent its 
tendrils forward to grip first the local, then the 
national, and finally the imperial character of the 
English city. At no time has London been ready 
to assume an expansion into empire greatness, but 
at all times has she stood out for state influence. 
Her influence on the state is the parallel, the 
microscopic parallel, she obtained from her Roman 
beginnings, and we shall find that it lasts right 
through the course of her history. 

If London ceased to participate in " the glory 
that was Rome " it helped largely to establish the 
greatness that is Britain, and one would not too 



THE SURVIVAL OF THINGS ANCIENT 100 

closely compare the relative merits of the two 
positions. What we have to do now is to go 
forward with the evidence, the evidence of survivals 
and of continuity which have established in our 
midst not merely a great city, but a great city- 
institution. 



CHAPTER V 

ENGLISH INCOMINGS 

The date or period of the English entry into London 
is not known, and cannot be known. There is no 
history of it, no mention of it in Anglo-Saxon history. 
They certainly did not enter it tumultuously or at a 
rush. They appear there without any prefatory action, 
and Beda's casual allusion to " a certain Frisian in 
London," Lundoniam Freso cuidam, 1 in a.d. 679, 
does not lend colour to a general English occupation. 
I have expressed the opinion in a former work that 
they overflowed into it, as it were, and did not even 
deliberately enter and attempt to take it over into 
their polity. This opinion is confirmed by all the 
evidence I have learned since. When we are able 
to catch a glimpse of the doings of the English in 
London we find them there vigorously unsuccessful. 
They attempt to dominate London with English 
ideas of rule and governance, and are not only 
vigorously unsuccessful in this main object, but they 
lay bare the sources of their unsuccess in the looseness 
of the tribal institutions which they would substitute 
for the ancient civic organisation. The roughness of 

1 Lib. iv. cap. xxii. 
110 



ENGLISH INCOMINGS 111 

their attempt in this direction lies heavily on the 
institutional life of London, but the skill, triumphant 
in its delicacy, of those who opposed the drastic 
operation also reveals itself. The interest of this 
particular point is extraordinarily great. It answers 
not only an important problem in the life of early 
London, but it illustrates in a peculiar way the 
characteristic of English governing power, wherever 
and whenever it has been exercised. This power 
proceeded from the new conception of lordship which 
followed upon the Teutonic eruption on Roman 
government. The note of the new system was lord- 
ship, with its accompanying vassalage and personal 
ties. Everywhere do we see this development. We 
need not pause at the variations between the different 
degrees of lordship, the series always ending in the 
unquestioned lordship of the king ; we may perhaps 
note the special characteristics of the beneftcium, its 
derivation, according to the best authorities, from 
the ecclesiastical tenure of the precarium when 
church lands were seized ; but the one dominant note 
is that of lordship and vassalage taking the place of 
state government on the imperial basis of Rome. 

London in due course came under the influence of 
this new element of lordship, and the moment when 
a great statesman, who was also great soldier and 
great king, great scholar and great man — Alfred the 
Great of England — deliberately entered London with 
the settled purpose of bringing it into Anglo-Saxon 
polity, that moment in the year 898 when he surveyed 



112 LONDON 

London, recognised its strategical importance, and 
determined to use it in the struggle against the 
Danes, marks unmistakably the one great epoch in 
the history of London which made it English London 
as well as Roman Londinium. From this date 
London was always prominent in the struggle of the 
English against their enemies. She took her share 
right gloriously, standing by Eadward, Athelstan, 
Eadmund, as Alfred would have had her stand if he 
could have commanded her in this respect. She then 
at last owned as of right her new name of London- 
byrig and entered the English political system. The 
significance of King Alfred's action, however, is not 
in what followed his acceptance of London's position, 
as in the circumstances which surrounded this unique 
transaction. The king evidently goes to London as 
to a strange city — surveys it, takes stock of it, gauges 
its strategical and other importance ; and only after 
these extensive and singularly formal acts, carried 
through not in the city itself, but outside the city 
at Chelsea in solemn conference, is it agreed to 
strengthen and adapt London for the fight. This 
conference follows the precedent set throughout 
Anglo-Saxon history. All Anglo-Saxon institutions 
were outside the city. Kings were crowned at 
Kingston, not in London. They were anointed at 
Westminster. The assembled witan met not under 
cover of a great hall in the city but sub dio in the 
open country, and on the few occasions when the 
gathering was in London it was held principally for 



ENGLISH INCOMINGS 113 

church not state purposes. It met at Celchys fre- 
quently. 

There is no record like this in all English history. 
It is as accidental as it well could be. It is not 
derived from the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, from Asser's 
Life, or from any chronicle record, but is simply the 
introductory sentence to a charter, a.d. 898, granting 
lands at " Retheres Hide," near London, to the See 
of Worcester. " Contigit con venire in loco qui 
dicitur Celchys Alfredum regem, Plegmundum 
archiepiscopum, nee non iEderedum ducem partis 
regionis Merciorum et /Ethilflaedum sororem regis 
cosque conloquium habuisse de instauracione urbis 
Lundonie." 1 Whatever the exact meaning of "in- 
stauracione" may be, it does not mean rebuilding. 
It is a translation word found in the Anglo-Saxon 
glossaries, and equates with " change " rather than any 
other meaning. In any case, it cannot relate merely 
to the restoration of a devastated London. The 
whole episode suggests a strange, almost, one would 
say, a foreign city, a city that, at all events up to 
that date, was not an English city. London had been 
in the midst of the Danish onslaught, and on the 
whole the conflicting records do not tell for the 
capture and occupation of London by the marauders. 
Their settlement was in London, not within the 
walls ; Aldwych stood for them as London, was in fact 
their London. Alfred's act was most likely directed 
to bringing up to date defences that were not so use 

1 Birch, Cartularium Saxonicum, vol. ii. No. 577. 



114 LONDON 

ful as they might be for his purpose and his resources, 
and the conference to settle this had before it another 
and deeper problem as well as the ostensible and 
minor problem. London had already fought for 
herself against the Danes, and had fought not only 
successfully but independently. This is quite clear 
from the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. The conference 
was to settle whether London would fight for the 
English, and what would be her then position as a 
defensive city of the nation. This was the real 
problem before that great conference. 

It was solved right gloriously. London in fighting 
on her own independent plan would be at the same 
time fighting for all England. The best evidence 
of this result is in the year 994. " Here in this 
year came Anlaf and Swegen to London with 
ninety-four ships, and they were fighting constantly 
against the town, and tried also to set fire to it ; but 
there they sustained more harm and evil than ever 
they imagined any townsmen could do unto them." 1 
The same evidence is given by Saxo Grammaticus, 
who, describing the treachery of the Danes against 
London, which they could not capture, introduces 
us to a London hero, Daleman, killed by their 
treachery. 2 The state had never defended London, 
and here we have London defending the state by 
defending herself. It is the story of an almost 
independent city. The city in arms as the city in 

1 Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, anno 99 i, trans, by E. E. C. Gomme. 

2 Saxo Grammaticus, trans. Elton, lib. ii. cap. 50. 



ENGLISH INCOMINGS 115 

peace had not hitherto been an integral part of the 
nation, and what King Alfred had done with his 
conference was to bring home to both nation and 
city that the old independence must come to an 
end and be exercised, if exercised at all, on con- 
stitutional lines. 

London answered to the call, and there is therefore 
to consider what were the immediate effects upon 
her position as a city of the English. The facts 
are soon revealed. That London already possessed 
laws and governance of her own when the dawn of 
recorded history thus breaks once more upon the 
city is certain. That there was added to these two 
elements of city life another and antagonistic element 
is the new experience which arose from these events. 
There grew up within the city something besides 
the more ancient laws and governance — not Anglo- 
Saxon laws, but Anglo-Saxon customs ; not Anglo- 
Saxon governance, but Anglo-Saxon institutions, 
occupying subordinate not dominant positions. 

These institutions have to be considered, not from 
their superficial side, their titles, and their general 
attributes, but from their actual position in the city. 
The folkmoot held in the open air on a piece of land, 
qui dicitur " folkmoot," near St Paul's, and attended 
by all citizens in the primitive fashion of a primary 
assembly, is entirely Anglo-Saxon in form. But it 
possessed no powers of government. All it possessed 
was the power to grumble, to protest, to use its 
ancient Teutonic formula, " Aye, aye "or " Nay, nay," 



116 LONDON 

as against the pronouncements of the discreet men 
{probi homines) of the city. The history of the folk- 
moot of London is one of the most instructive chapters 
in the reconstruction of the early period. It is always 
struggling to be dominant, but is never dominant ; 
it is always trying to assume powers, and is always 
dominated from above by those terribly discreet men 
of the city who continue to govern in spite of folk- 
moots and their formula?, and who in the end witnessed 
the wiping out of the folk moot altogether, and its 
removal from amongst the city institutions. This 
struggle for power reveals two distinctly opposite 
institutions, so distinctly opposite as to impose upon 
us the conclusion that they are derived from two 
distinct sources. We know the folkmoot in its un- 
success was English ; we can only conclude that the 
body of discreet men was, in its success, Roman in 
origin. There is no other argument to adopt. In 
the course of this struggle, illuminating points crop 
up at several stages, all of which tend to confirm 
this conclusion ; and when the folkmoot is attended 
by "the populace, sons of divers mothers, many of 
them born without the city, and many of servile 
condition, with loud shouts of 'Nay, nay, nay," 
we are in presence of the tumultuous Anglo-Saxon, 
looking beyond the walls of London to the English 
settlements around, from whence he derives whatever 
power he possesses. 

This is well illustrated in the mediaeval proceedings, 
and I shall not hesitate to quote these as absolute 



ENGLISH INCOMINGS 117 

survivals of proceedings which had been going on ever 
since the Anglo-Saxon had entered London. There 
is nothing of Plantagenet character in these proceed- 
ings. They do not belong to Norman history. They 
can only belong to Anglo-Saxon history, and they 
bring with it the evidence of the real governance of 
London by direct continuity from Roman times. 

These proceedings, showing the fight between the 
popular assembly or folkmoot, where every citizen 
had a right to attend, and the smaller body, are well 
related in the Chronicles of the Mayor and Sheriff's 
of London, 1188 to 1274. In 1249, upon the abbot 
of Westminster and his advisers desiring to hold a 
conference with the mayor and aldermen, " the whole 
of the populace opposed it, and would not allow them, 
without the whole of the commons being present, to 
treat at all of the matter" (p. 18). Again, in 1257, 
on the occasion of charges being made against certain 
aldermen, the king gave orders to the sheriffs to 
convene the folkmoot on the morrow at St Paul's 
Cross, upon which day all the aldermen and citizens 
came there. The proceedings are fully described, but 
the passage interesting to us is the following : " To 
which inquiry (no conference being first held among 
the discreet men of the city, as is usually the practice), 
answer was made by some of the populace, sons of 
divers mothers, many of them born without the city, 
and many of servile condition, with loud shouts of 
'Nay, nay, nay ,: ' (p. 38). In 12G2 we have the 
following remarkable passage : " The mayor, Thomas 



118 LONDON 

FitzThomas, during the time of his mayoralty, had so 
pampered the city populace that, styling themselves 
the ' commons of the city,' they had obtained the first 
voice in the city. For the mayor, in doing all that 
he had to do, acted and determined through them, 
and would say to them, ' Is it your will that so it 
shall be ? ' and then if they answered, ' Ya, ya,' so it 
was done. And, on the other hand, the aldermen or 
chief citizens were little or not at all consulted on 
such matter" (p. 59). In 12G5 the populace cried 
" Nay, nay " to the proposed election of William 
FitzRichard as sheriff, and demanded Thomas Fitz- 
Thomas (p. 91). In 1266 "the low people arose, 
calling themselves the commons of the city " (p. 95). 
In 1271 the old dispute broke out again in the election 
of mayor, and the record of this is very instructive 
(pp. 154-156). 

It is instructive in many ways. Nowhere in 
London archives or in London tradition do we have 
the English method of electing the Mayor, Portreeve, 
or whatever other title the head of the city was 
called. The English method survived in other 
municipal towns but not in London. At Folkestone, 
Seaford, Southampton, High Wycombe, and other 
purely English towns the ceremony of electing the 
chief magistrate belongs to the domain of primitive 
politics and is of the same character as that of 
electing the King on the sacred stone at Kingston. 1 

1 See my Primitive Folkmoots, pp. 153-155. The London stone 
ceremony is referable to an entirely different origin. 



ENGLISH INCOMINGS 119 

London contains no trace of such a custom in con- 
nection with the intruding folkmoot of the English 
incomers, and this negative evidence is of importance. 
The folkmoot disappeared from London institutions. 
It may have eventually developed into the Common 
Hall, the one institution of the city which represents 
the purely democratic element. But even here it is 
to be noted that it is engulfed by the city organisa- 
tion ; it did not itself engulf, it is engulfed. It is 
admitted no longer as the open democratic meeting 
in the open air for any purpose, but as the restricted 
democratic meeting in the Guildhall for definite 
purposes. " Aye, aye " and " Nay, nay," no longer 
the formula, is still the principle. The Common Hall 
accepts or rejects the nominated mayor. It is the 
electoral college for certain other offices. But, again, 
it has no strong functional powers, and its more 
ancient powers of assembling whensoever it would at 
the call of the great bell of St Paul's and grumbling 
as it had a mind to, is replaced by limited powers of 
meeting and by strictly limited functions. The city 
government could not perhaps destroy it, could not 
easily destroy it at all events, and it was therefore 
brought within the roofed limitations of the Guildhall, 
its functions being fenced in on every side with a 
precise ceremonial of so pronounced a character as to 
supply evidence of the limitations imposed. And 
finally the cathedral authorities laid sacrilegious 
hands upon the site of the ancient meeting-place — 
qui cUcitur folkmoot, as the records proudly call it. 



120 LONDON 

There is no record of the first institution of the 
folkmoot, only of its struggle and its disappearance. 

One other institution has a somewhat different 
history, but the same practical result. I mean the 
Court of Hustings, with its significant English title. 
In this court all kinds of real actions for the recovery 
of lands and tenements within the city and its liberties 
are cognisable ; and in this language we can easily 
recognise a translation of that which would have de- 
scribed the archaic duties of the old tribal assembly, 
especially if we take into consideration the exceedingly 
curious powers which attend proceedings under this 
court. Just as in the Icelandic Housething, it has 
to deal with each case straight off — it is a court of 
emergency. When it gets conventionalised the pro- 
cedure is still archaic in form. The recorder must 
pronounce judgment, and forty freeholders form 
the inquest, chosen from twelve men and the alder- 
men from the ward where the tenements in question 
lie, and the same number from each of the three 
wards next to the said tenements. Such a court as 
this was the result of no political legislation. It is 
the descendant of that archaic assembly which belonged 
to every tribal community. It held sway in the city 
as the highest court, and it has become obsolete. It 
came into the city from without, and there is no record 
of its entry. It ceased to exist there, and there is no 
formal record of its disuse. 

This would apparently supply evidence of a tem- 
porarily successful English intrusion into the govern- 



ENGLISH INCOMINGS 121 

ance of London. But it is so in form only. The 
Court of Hustings administered no primitive form of 
land tenure. There were no manorial customs of 
descent to adjudicate. There is merely the law of 
London, and the method by which the city kept its 
powers in this court is fully recorded in the archives 
which have been so fully published by the corpora- 
tion. 1 The Court of Hustings was English in form, 
but it was dominated by the civic authorities. 

In the conditions of these two institutions we have 
the real facts of 
London history dur- 
ing Anglo - Saxon 
rule in the country. 
The folkmoot re- 
mained English in 

, , Tumbril, used for punishing offenders. 

form and in consti- 
tution, but it was never allowed to assume a position 
in the organised government of the city. It was 
dominated from above. The hustings remained 
English in form and in constitution, but it was 
dominated from within. The mayor and aldermen 
were its chief members, the administration of a 
limited section of London law, not English law, 
was its only duty. Powerful enough to force these 
two institutions into the city, the English incomers 
were not powerful enough to make them essential and 
dominating institutions of the city. And so their 

1 Calendar of Wills proved and enrolled in the Court of Husting, 
Lond., a.d. 1258-1688 ; see p. xii of the' introduction. 




122 



LONDON 



disappearance, by the process of absorption and 
assimilation, is the measure of their influence upon 
the city. 

This evidence is that of impotent forcefulness, not 
the strength of a new governing people, and beyond 
this there is nothing of supreme importance which 
comes to later London from Anglo-Saxon London. 
Even the famous example of London legislation 

known as the judicia 
civitatis Lundonke does 
not bequeath a clean-cut 
Anglo-Saxon institution. 
To it we may perhaps 
have to refer the origin 
of the later English gild 
system. But it is not a 
document which speaks 
of Anglo-Saxon domin- 
ance. It speaks of Lon- 
don necessities under Anglo-Saxon rule, and shows 
the resourcefulness of London statesmen. Its pur- 
pose was to prevent robberies in the country com- 
mitted upon London merchandise. Its method of 
doing this was to institute a citizen gildship which 
should have the same procedure and the same powers 
outside London as the Anglo-Saxon tribal kinships 
had there — the powers of defence, reprisal, and wer- 
gild. These belong to a tribal system, not a state 
system of polity. London by this act, it is true, 
adopted Anglo-Saxon methods for London purposes, 




The pillory, from Harman, A Caveat 
or Warning, 1567. 



I G=#^| 



ENGLISH INCOMINGS 123 

but by so doing it declared in unmistakable language 
that at this period of its Anglo-Saxon existence it 
was not governed by Anglo-Saxon rule and pro- 
cedure. It was the only means left to it to secure 
protection for its trade in an Anglo-Saxon-governed 
country, and so, in its own practical manner, it adopted 
this means, as throughout its history it has adopted 
contemporary methods to meet the necessities of 
the moment. 1 

And when we come to examine the detail of this 
gildship organisation, we 
discover further evidence 
of its special London 
characteristic. It is, after 
all, a London form 

Of gildship based Upon Fetters, from Harmon. 

Anglo-Saxon formulae, but not an English gildship of 
the accepted type. The keynote of its purpose is not, 
as every authority has insisted upon, its organisation 
for the common good to every gild brother, but it is 
the common enmity to those outside the gildship — 
" We should be all so in one friendship as in one 
foeship, whichever it then may be," are the expressive 
words of the city law. " Whichever it then may be ! " 
And as foeship occupies by far the larger number of 
clauses of which the law is composed, it is not difficult 
to estimate the larger issue of the law, compared 
with the formal issue of the gildship. Brotherhood 
is one thing. It was needful to get the necessary 

1 I worked this out in my Governance of London, pp. 121-135. 



|°^)=<SFI 



124 LONDON 

banding together ; perhaps it was needful to get the 
sovereign sanction to the exercise of the new London 
law beyond the bounds of London. Protection 
against the foe is quite another thing, and with the 
rights of wergild, pursuit, and retaliation preserved 
to the gildsmen there can be no question as to 
which is the dominant feature of the earliest gild 
of London. 1 If this institution is handed down to 
Norman and Plantagenet London as a heritage from 




Ducking stool. 

English London, it is in the form of a London 
ordinance which was not English, and by the 
agency of a London governance which was not 
English. 

On the other hand, there is something of signifi- 
cance in that a few minor things — minor in the scale 
of institutions, that is — may no doubt be scheduled 
among inherited items from Anglo-Saxon origins. 
The methods of punishment — the pound, the stocks, 
the pillory, the ducking stool, the drowning place — 

1 A comparison with the Danish gilds is most useful on this 
point ; see Toulmin Smith's English Gilds, Brentano's introductory 
essay, pp. cii-civ. 



ENGLISH INCOMINGS 



125 




The stocks, from an old ballad. 



are of probable English origin. 1 Methods of punish- 
ment, however, come after the sentence of punish- 
ment, after the verdict 
and the judgment. 
The executioner or 
the gaoler is a less im- 
portant officer than the 
law which condemns 
and the judge who 
imposes sentence ; the 
judgment always be- 
longs to the upper power, is always the mayor and 
aldermen in mediaeval days ; and the form of punish- 
ment alone comes from the lower power. Fragments 

such as these are not 
to be discarded or 
minimised. They have 
an importance all their 
own, and we have only 
arrived by their means 
at the same result 
which has already been 
reached. 

Two further points are of interest in the con- 
sideration of Anglo-Saxon London — the meeting of 

1 See the curious "Judgments of pillory for Lies, Slanders, 
Falsehoods, and Deceits ; as also other Judgments, Imprisonments, 
Forfeitures, Fines, and Burnings of divers things," in the Liber 
A/bus (Riley trans.), pp. 517-526. The pillory was in Cheapside, 
the stocks upon Cornhill and in Lombard Street, judicial drowning 
at Baynard's Castle in the Thames. 





o-a 



£T 




The stocks, from Harman, A Caveal 
or Warning, 1567. 



126 



LONDON 



the witenagemot there and the residence of the 
king. Liebermann has recently, at the Historical 
Congress of 1913, collected the principal facts on 
the national assembly in the Anglo-Saxon period, 
and enumerates twenty-one meetings in London, 
ranging from a.d. 790 to the end of the Anglo- 
Saxon period. This is undoubtedly important 
evidence as to the position of London, but it is 
difficult to say in what precise direction. There 

may be a fragment of 
Anglo-Saxon history in 
another item, interest- 
ing on its own account, 
and occurring in a six- 
teenth-century book of 
accounts belonging to 
St Paul's Cathedral. 
It relates to " certeyn olde ruinouse houses and 
grounde lying in Aldermanbury, sumtyme the Place 
of Saincte ^Ethelbert Kyng." l Whether the naming 
of this place implies a residence in London of Alfred's 
brother and predecessor, or whether it is a post- 
scriptum of the Cathedral church, one dare not say. 
It is a fragment with all sorts of possibilities if we 
only possessed its historical beginning. 

Looking generally at the several phases of the 
London constitution, we can find no evidence of it ever 
becoming Englished as York, Chester, Winchester, 
Exeter, and other Roman cities were Englished. It 

1 Hist. MSS. Com., ix. p. 44. 




Whipping at the cart-tail, from Harman, 
A Caveator Warning, 1567. 



ENGLISH INCOMINGS 



127 



is only outside London that we can discover the 
English institutions in their full strength. Anglo- 
Saxon sovereignty governed from outside London — 
at Kingston the crowning place in tribal fashion, at 
Westminster the assembly place in tribal fashion ; 
and London remains from this cause the one capital 
city of western civilisation where the governmental 
centre is not within the 
city. This surely is 
conclusive. It shows 
not only the extent, 
but the limitations of 
Anglo - Saxon power. 
It could not penetrate 
into London. It could 
only govern from out- 
side. This state of 
things falls into line 
with other evidence. 
The Danish settlement 
at Aldwych, resulting from the Danish conquest 
of the country, remained outside the city walls. 
At Rochester and at Dublin settlements precisely 
similar in character were inside the city. The 
English land tenure and village settlements remained 
outside the city boundary, came right up to it, 
and then were stayed by the city law of land 
tenure which descends from Roman sources. In- 
stances of this occur quite late in historical evidence 
because land tenure changes so slowly. Common 




Gallows, from Harnian, A Caveat or 
Warning, 1567. 



128 LONDON 

fields of the Anglo-Saxon type are marked upon 
the early maps of London, while among the records 
there are many interesting evidences of this. A 
True Bill, 20th January, 3 Elizabeth, cites that 
" whereas the citizens and other inhabitants of London 
have been accustomed from time beyond the memory 
of man to shoot with bows in all the open fields in the 
parish of Stebbynhith, co. Midd. and elsewhere near 
the said city, viz. in the common lands called 
Stebbynhyth feyldes, Ratclyff feyldes, Mylende 
feyldes, Blethnall grene, Spyttle-feildes, Morefeldes, 
Fynnesbury feyldes, Hoggesdon feyldes, co. Midd. 
without hindrance from any person, so that all archers 
have been able to go out in the same open fields to 
shoot with the bow and come out from them at 
pleasure, in such manner nevertheless that the said 
archers do no harm to the growing corn nor to grass 
reserved for seed, John Draney, citizen and clothier 
of the city of London, has notwithstanding, on the 
aforesaid day, trenched in with deep ditches a certain 
open field called Stebbynhithe close and against 
custom has planted it with green hedges, in order 
that the said archers may no longer be able to enter, 
pass through and leave freely and at their pleasure 
the said field of Stebbynhithe Close." There is no 
mistaking the historical significance of this. The 
lands of Stepney, though they belonged to the 
cathedral of St Paul's, were not held by municipal 
tenures. They were entirely manorial, and the 
holders were not citizens of London, but merely 



ENGLISH INCOMINGS 129 

tenants of the cathedral chapter, lords of the manor. 
They illustrate, as corresponding evidence all round 
London from maps as from records would illustrate, 
that Saxon and Dane, all-powerful and strong out- 
side London, are struggling and unsuccessful in 
their efforts to obtain command in London ; and the 
fact that the Danish conquest supplies the most 
comprehensive parallel to the Saxon conquest is 
conclusive proof of the power of Roman London 
throughout Anglo-Saxon history. 

We have now arrived at an important stage. 
London appears from the evidence to be extra- 
ordinarily independent of the English state, and even 
of the English sovereignty. She also appears from 
other evidence to have certain powers over the English 
sovereignty itself. This comes, in the first place, from 
the part which London played in the election of the 
Danish kings of the early eleventh century. If this 
action had ceased with the eleventh century, and with 
the Danish monarchs, there would not have been much 
to say of it. It was not only repeated in the restored 
Anglo-Saxon kingship, but it was repeated during the 
entire Plantagenet rule. It is impossible, then, to 
derive this important London function from Danish 
sources, and if we go behind the records of this date 
we find it necessary to appeal to certain conditions 
which once more take us to the Roman city of 
Londinium. 

As in Gaul, so in Britain, the first act of an usurping 
Cassar was to fix upon his city of government — his 



130 LONDON 

Rome. There can be no doubt that both Carausius 
and Allectus fixed upon London for this purpose. 
It is a matter of recorded history that Artorius, the 
dux bellorum of the cities and the Britons, was crowned 
king at Silchester, Caerleon, and London. An ela- 
borate description of the ceremonial at Caerleon is 
given by Geoffrey of Monmouth, which is stated to 
be founded on ancient custom (de more), and has all 
the appearance of a genuine account from some 
ancient source. Honorius in 409 had sent Constantine 
a robe of the imperial purple as formal acknowledg- 
ment of his claim as joint emperor. At this point 
we may clearly refer to the Welsh attitude towards 
" the crown of London," and suggest that in London 
there was retained official knowledge of the Roman 
ceremonial at the inauguration of Emperor, Ca?sar, or 
Rex ; that the constant reference to the formula of 
" the crown of London " was, in fact, a reference to 
London as the only place in Britain where knowledge 
of the imperial ceremony resided, and that in this 
way London was looked up to as the source from 
which alone the sovereignty of Britain or its parts 
could be obtained. The claimants to the purple 
elected in Britain would have used that ceremonial 
to strengthen their sovereign power. The later post- 
Roman leaders, Aurelius Ambrosius and the de- 
scendants of Maximus, would carry on the customary 
observances ; and when the early English monarchs 
appreciated the distinction, to use Mr Plummer's 
words, " between the immediate dominions or 



ENGLISH INCOMINGS 131 

regnum of any king and the imperium or overlord- 
ship which he might exercise over other Saxon 
kingdoms or Celtic tribes," 1 they too sought the 
ceremonial of the imperial purple. Edwin is 
recorded by Beda to have definitely assumed the 
insignia of Roman authority : " When he walked 
along the streets, that sort of banner which the 
Romans called Tufa and the English Thuuf was 
borne before him " ; 2 and Palgrave goes so far as to 
say that " if his reign had been prolonged he might 
have renovated the Empire of Britain." 3 

I am going to rely upon the fact that custom is 
stated to be at the root of all this for the necessary 
conclusion that we have in these disconnected frag- 
ments a historic basis for the continuity of Roman 
ceremonial, so far at least as it affected the sovereign 
authority. The city was a necessary factor in the 
situation, and if we can find that London exercises 
extraordinary functions in connection with the 
sovereignty in post-Roman times, there is strong 
claim for such functions being derived from ancient 
custom which reaches back to Roman Londinium. 

We do not find such evidence until the early 
eleventh century, but it is then definite and clear, 
with no suggestion that it was an innovation. Taking 
each authority who supplies evidence of this as of 
almost equal value — as the recorder of a tradition 

1 Plummer's Beda, vol. ii. p. 86. 

2 Beda, Eccles. Hist., lib. ii. cap. xvi. 

3 English Commonwealth, vol. i. p. 429- 



132 LONDON 

capable of being authenticated at the date of the 
record, if not of facts obtained from historical data — 
we find that William of Malmesbury uses important 
terms. He describes " Londoners alone protecting 
their lawful sovereign within their walls," in the 
unsuccessful attack of Sweyn against Ethelred in 
1013. He attributes Edmund's election as due to 
" the citizens immediately," upon the death of Ethelred 
in 1016, having "proclaimed Edmund king." He 
describes Harold's succession to Canute in 1036 in 
still more remarkable terms : " He was elected by 
the Danes and the citizens of London, who from long 
intercourse with these barbarians had almost entirely 
adopted their customs." Florence of Worcester and 
Roger of Hoveden first describe the election of 
Canute in 1016 by the witan, and then, as against 
this act, go on to say that " the citizens of London, 
and a part of the nobles who were at that time 
staying there, with unanimous consent elected the 
Clito Edmund king." Matthew of Westminster 
repeats Florence's account of Edmund's election, 
but gives another account of Harold's election. 
" Leofric and all the Danish nobles in London 
elected Harold." Henry of Huntingdon describes 
the election of Harold "at a great council held 
at Oxford, where Earl Leofric and all the thanes 
north of the Thames, with the Londoners, chose 
Harold." Ingulph, for what he is worth, says 
Edmund succeeded to the throne " upon the elec- 
tion of the Londoners and West Saxons " ; and 



ENGLISH INCOMINGS 133 

that " the Danes and Londoners made choice of 
Harold" in 1036. The terms used in describing 
these transactions are practically the same in all 
these authorities. There is nothing to be gained by 
attempting to discriminate between the language 
of Florence compared with that of William of 
Malmesbury or Roger of Hoveden. " Conclamant," 
" elegerunt " have a perfectly definite meaning, and 
when their nominatives are the citizens of London, 
" oppidani," " cives," and so on, the position of 
London in Anglo-Saxon times with regard to the 
English sovereignty is placed beyond question. 

There is clearly much of significance in these 
records. They relate wholly to the Danish period, 
but not wholly to the Danish kings, for they begin 
with one great English king — Edmund Ironside— 
and the attitude of London towards Edmund was 
definitely and emphatically that of a city carrying 
out in a peculiarly strong way a traditional right. 
Moreover, the Danes cannot themselves have intro- 
duced a city ceremonial in connection with the 
sovereignty, for it was contrary to all their traditions 
and their practices. The alternative is that they 
used the London position to serve their own purposes, 
and the fact that the saga of these events, The 
Hcimskringla, contains reference to the traditional 
formula, " London's king," in connection with a skald 
rhyme on King Canute, 1 is confirmation of this 
conclusion. It is the same formula as that which 

1 The Heimskringhi) trans. Morris, cap. cxciv. 



134 LONDON 

occurs in the Welsh laws, and it must refer back to 
the same conditions. We arrive then at this, that 
London had a special and definite relationship to 
the national or state sovereignty, that it was part of 
the city institutions, and that, broken as the record 
is, it goes back to the city institution of Roman 
Londinium. 

There is one word by way of summary to add here. 
At the root of all these phases of London constitu- 
tional life during the Anglo-Saxon period lies the 
cardinal fact of continuity. Anglo-Saxon London 
was Roman London in all essentials, English London 
in nothing but sub-essentials — in its endeavours and 
not in its successes. The fact of continuity lands us 
at the end of the Anglo-Saxon period with a city 
fundamentally Roman in constitution, in relation- 
ship to the state, Englished perhaps at the fringes, 
Englished in its outlook, particularly Englished in its 
growing attitude of loyalty to the English state — in 
all else Roman. 



CHAPTER VI 

THE INSTITUTION OF THE CITY 

The Norman brought English London into the 
English state — made it one of the great institutions 
of the English state. But not even the Norman 
kings, with their great genius for government and 
greater ambition, determined what precisely its posi- 
tion was to be. That was the work of London itself. 
It struggled to its new position. In the records of 
the city one feels the movement of the struggle — the 
writhing powerful body beneath the hand of inexor- 
able sovereignty. But the fact of struggle, the fact 
that we have a struggling London in place of a free 
and contented London, is the measure of the city's 
adherence to its old life and methods. If it did not 
win all along the line, it at least determined that it 
was to be unlike anything else in a political state of 
the western world, that it was to be a new departure 
among political institutions, an experiment which, 
under the genius of a governing people, was to work 
through to a successful issue. The continuity of 
history and development did not cease. It was not 
even interrupted. The fresh stimulus and the new 
direction were switched on to the old driving power, 

135 



136 



LONDON 



and London began its final stage of city existence, 
never again to be a neglected city, never to be a 
conquered city, never, except in modern days, to be 
unconsidered in its greatness. 

The work of the Norman was begun by charter 



la mo^lmiV I fa cjVfj)^ X^glere. 
li\ftttfta.Ctetc||^ w ,c> ^ win etc; 




Cfayc] 

tariw 



■% 



Inm^cth 



Wcftr? 



Kuic*>cnVmu 







£eic_*\><Vf. 




o 



-uX, 






London in the thirteenth century. Royal MSS. 14, c. 7. 

grants. William the Conqueror began, and his 
successors continued, the practice of granting the city 
powers by charter. But a study of the powers in the 
charter clauses shows that the grants were in the 
great majority of cases not new to the citizens, not 
asked for by the citizens, not even required by the 
citizens. They were already existing powers charter- 
ised, if it is admissible to use such a word, by the 



THE INSTITUTION OF THE CITY 137 

sovereign. They were powers which the citizens 
possessed before the new-fangled thing known as a 
charter was imposed upon them ; once more, then, 
revealing facts older than the historical record of their 
existence. 

When charter legislation was introduced by the able 
statesmen of the Norman conquest, it became one of 
the greatest assets of the sovereign power, and the 
greatest moulding force of state and city. It brought 
civic custom and law within the 
authority of the sovereign. Its 
long duration and constant exer- 
cise show how the sovereign 
power was gradually, but effect- 
ively, bringing under its sway 
the civic powers exercised by the 
city independently of the sove- 01d mayorahy seal (?thir . 
reign power. It did more than te 5 T nth century) of the City 

° r of London. 

this. It established the principle 
that what the sovereign had granted the sovereign 
could annul or alter. It brought the city under the 
£egis of the state — made it an institution of the state. 
In this new condition of things, London, working 
for the most part with its ancient machinery, took its 
place, and took it greatly. It never liked its charter 
grants, and when the occasion came to it, it swept the 
very conception of charters on one side and stood for 
its ancient communal rights in its old unfettered way. 
This is the foundation of the famous story of the 
commune if we read it in the full light of surviving 




138 LONDON 

and continuous history. It is neither sudden nor 
special. It comes from the ancient conditions of 
London, not from a copying of the cities of France. 
It is the reclaiming of an ancient right, not the grant 
of a new one. It is the city's demand, not the sove- 
reign's concession. It is an acquisition so important 
as to amount to an abstraction from the sovereign 
power and the restitution of city power. This is the 
commune of London in its rightful place among 
London institutions, continuing from the oldest 
governing institutions of the city, proceeding to the 
new development which by reason of intervening 
events was found to be necessary. 

The keynote of the commune is that it was not 
granted by way of charter. At a time when charter- 
granting, in front of the commune and after the 
commune, was the predominant policy of the sovereign 
power, it is unmistakably significant that the con- 
cession of the commune did not produce a charter. 
The reason is that it came from the demand of the 
citizens. They assembled in a body to demand it, 
and they, knowing by this time how charter grants 
could act against them, and that they were of little 
worth to them when the rights they desired depended 
upon traditional custom and usage, demanded and 
obtained the commune as an act between sovereign 
and citizen. " London learnt now for the first time," 
are the words of the chronicler, Richard of Devizes, 1 

1 Richard of Devizes, De rebus gestis Ricardi primi, Rolls edit., 
vol. iii. p. 4 16. 



THE INSTITUTION OF THE CITY 139 

"in obtaining the commune, that the realm had no 
king, for neither Richard nor his father and predecessor 
Henry would ever have allowed this to be done even 
for a thousand thousand marks of silver ; how great 
are the evils which spring from a commune may be 
understood from the common saying — it puffs up the 
community with arrogance and frightens the kings." 
This common saying was accompanied by another : 
" Come what may, the Londoners would have no king 
but their mayor." This evidence is undoubted. It 
takes us back to that ancient kingship of London 
which is so evident in Welsh tradition during post- 
Roman times ; it shows the Londoners of 1191 going 
back to their ancient constitution. The very name 
of the commune was dear to Londoners. It had been 
put forward as the authority for demands in 1141, as 
William of Malmesbury testifies— it was the ideal of 
London's constitution. 

What, then, was this commune, of English origin 
and not of French manufacture — this communa, 
communia, communio (all three terms are used) ? It 
was the right of common government by themselves, 
the right of legal recognition as a community, persona 
ficta, by the laws of the land. And it was a restoration, 
for the Normans had eaten into the city constitution 
by its sokes, little islands of personal jurisdiction within 
the city bounds which made the city appear as a 
bundle of communities instead of one community. 
It is the principle of the one community which was 
the basis of the commune. Once this was recognised 



140 



LONDON 



all else fitted into the city organisation without further 
trouble and enabled London in 1215 to stand for 
its rights. 1 It has been suggested by some historians 
that London reaped little advantage from this act 
of John, Prince Regent, and traitor to his brother 
the king. But let them study the charters. Once 

more we see the 
point of view 
changing. William 
began with his " I 
will," and his suc- 
cessors followed 
with a formula to 
the same purpose. 
Charters from 
Henry I. to Ed- 
ward I. were ad- 
dressed by the 

Seal of Sir Robert FitzWalter, castellain or chief killff " to the arcll- 
banneret of London, temp. Edward I. . 

bishops, bishops, 
abbots, earls, barons, justices, sheriffs, stewards, 
castle-keepers, constables, bailiffs, ministers, and all 
his faithful subjects greeting," and then proceeded, 
" Know ye, that we have granted and by this present 
charter confirmed for us and our heirs," etc. This 

1 In spite of Mr Round's brilliant study of the London commune 
I think the entire evidence points in the direction of my conclusion, 
and Mr Petit-Dutaillis's admirable summary of the evidence in his 
Studies and Notes to Stnbbs Const. Hist., pp. 96-106, finishes with an 
expression which, though incorrect in form, is practically confirma- 
tory of my view. 




THE INSTITUTION OF THE CITY 141 

applied to all the charters which granted or con- 
firmed already existing customs and rights, but when 
something absolutely new was the subject-matter 
a change came about, and the first charter of 
Edward II. denotes how drastic the change was 
to be, and how significantly it went back to early 
precedent. The citizens "had lately ordained and 
appointed among themselves, for the bettering of the 



■-fa* 1 








Bear-baiting, from Chapter House. 

same city, . . . certain things to be in the same city 
perpetually observed," and the king confirmed these 
" certain things." In doing this he was actually 
going back to the self- same procedure adopted by 
the citizens under King Athelstan. Both instru- 
ments were for the purpose of a change in the 
constitutions of the city. The citizens legislated for 
themselves. The sovereign endorsed this legislation 
in order that it might be recognised throughout the 
country outside the city. The closeness of this 
parallel in procedure is evidence of the continuity of 
London history — what was done in the years 900-912 



142 LONDON 

under King Athelstan the Saxon was done in the 
year 1319 under King Edward the Norman. 

During all this time, while London was settling 
down into its position as an English institution, 
things were happening which, if we could but even 
summarise, would reveal the inner working of 
London under its old system of independence. The 
great mass of its actions were unchartered — were 
not only unchartered, but were never considered as 
capable of being charterised. The state did not 
govern the people in the ordinary concerns of life. 
The land, the military forces, taxation, capital crimes, 
the administration of justice on the higher counts, 
were duties which the state attended to. The 
relationship of citizens to each other, the conditions 
of industry, the general order of things, were un- 
touched by the state, and few subjects are more worth 
the attention of the student than a classification 
of state law and municipal law in mediaeval times. 
It would show by way of contrast the ordinary 
manorial tenant to be almost unrecognised by the 
law, while the London citizen was protected by laws 
of his own, inherited or instituted. It would show 
London at the very top of things — London enjoying 
its heritage from its Roman beginning, hunting in 
territory extending all around to Crayford, Rich- 
mond, throughout Middlesex ; performing ancient 
city rights so far away from city gates as Knights- 
bridge ; controlling its magnificent river ; and above 
its enjoyments and its outlook beyond walled defences 



THE INSTITUTION OF THE CITY 143 

doing a thousand acts of governance as matters which 
had resided always in the city. 

We must illustrate the position by reference to 
some of the details. One of its acts is of supreme 
importance. It shows us once more the city in arms, 
not, as in Anglo-Saxon times, on behalf primarily of 
the city, but definitely assuming its military character 
on behalf of the state. In the wars under Stephen 
" there went out to a muster, of armed horsemen 
(armatorum equitum) 20,000 and of infantry 60,000 " 
(Fitzstephen). In 1232, " cives Londoniarum mon- 
straverunt se armatos a la Mile Ende et in foro Lon- 
doniarum bene paratos." 1 The great events of 1264 
were assisted by London, the third division of the 
army of the barons being composed of Londoners. 2 

Among the many difficulties with which the city 
had to contend, the most bothersome was the jurisdic- 
tion of the Norman sokes. The greatest of these soke 
jurisdictions was, however, not personal. It was the 
collegiate church of St Paul's. The sociological side 
of the Church has never been worked out by the his- 
torian, even if it has been thought about, and when 
he comes to his task he will find the evidence of 
St Paul's almost directly to his hand. The cathedral 
constitution, revealed by events in the twelfth and 
thirteenth centuries, shows traces of the original 

1 Cronica maiorum et vicecomitum Londoniarum (Camden Soc), p. 7. 
The use of the word "foro" is a significant survival from language 
which philologists should explain. 

2 Matthew Paris, Historia Major., anno 1264>. 



144 LONDON 

position of St Paul's as " the church of an exclusive 
body of clergy who owe to the bishop more respect 
than obedience," and the history of the cathedral 
" has tended from its foundation to make it rather the 
church of a city than a national or even a diocesan 
church." 1 This is an important addition to the 
history of London. The church reared its magnifi- 
cent nine for religious purposes above the heights of 
other buildings in the city, and, with its extensive 
buildings, it was enclosed within walls and gates. 
Within this great enclosure in the heart of the city 
was a considerable community, not wholly religious 
in character or action, and depending for its economic 
necessities upon its landed possessions all round 
London. It was a great social, economical, political 
institution, and in 1142 there were "Barons of St 
Paul's." 2 It took up in this city-life part of the 
position held by the city itself in Roman times. St 
Paul's divided with the city governing authority the 
inheritance from the Roman city. It was the centre 
of London hospitalities in Plantagenet days. 3 It 
was encroaching upon the city position all through 
Norman and Plantagenet days, and documents exist 
showing how the struggle went on. In 128.5 there 
came into the Guildhall before the mayor, aldermen, 
and other reputable men of the city, the Archdeacon 

1 Victoria Hist, of London, pp. 409, 420 ; and see my Governance 
of London, pp. 320-322. 

2 Hist. MSS. Com., ix. p. 40. 

3 Stubbs' Introductions to the Chronicles, p. 67. 



THE INSTITUTION OF THE CITY 145 

and other canons of St Paul's, with the king's writ, 
setting forth a complaint by the Bishop of London 
and the Dean and Chapter that Henry le Galeys, at 
the time he was mayor of the city, had erected houses 
near the wall of St Paul's churchyard, " their height 
exceeded the height of the wall, and the tenants threw 
dirt out of the windows and doors into the churchyard 
and walked to and fro the churchyard and their houses," 
and further, " that the houses stood so near the wall 
that their rain water dropped on to the wall," and 
stating that "it is adjudged in our court that the 
houses be pulled down so far as they are prejudicial 
to the said Dean and Chapter," and the city is com- 
manded " to see the said judgment executed without 
delay." 1 In 1352 the Dean and Chapter are sum- 
moned to the Husting of London "to show their 
right to enclose with doors a lane near their church 
in the parish of St Faith, which was formerly the 
king's highway. On Monday after the feast of St 
John ad Portam Latinam, they produce a charter of 
Henry III., dated at Clarendon on the 24th day of 
November in the thirty-seventh year of his reign, 
granting permission to Master Robert le Barton, 
Precentor of St Paul's, to enclose a lane which 
formerly belonged to Cecilia de Turri near St Paul's, 
provided that a gate be placed at either end of the 
lane, with keys for going in and going out, in the 
event of fire or of such other misfortunes as frequently 
occur in the city. The Dean and Chapter therefore 

1 Letter Book, temp. Ed. I., pp. 213-4. 

10 



146 



LONDON 



receive permission to maintain the enclosure." 1 At 
the pleas before the justices itinerant at the Tower of 
London, Hilary 14 Edward II. (1320), complaint 
was made that the Dean and Chapter had enclosed 
with a mud wall a piece of ground belonging to the 



y"""^- £*S^s.&M3ciTnmi Ronton 




Ecclesiastical court in thirteenth century. Royal MSS. 14, c. 7. 



king on which the mayor and commonalty used to 
hold their court, which was called folkmot, and on 
which was the great bell tower which the citizens used 
to enter in order to ring the great bell to summon 
the people ; and " the jury present that the Dean and 
Chapter have placed two wooden posts at the corner 
of the lane called Southgate, which was formerly 
open for horses and carts, and have placed iron chains 
1 Hist. MSS. Com., ix. p. 10. 



THE INSTITUTION OF THE CITY 147 

with locks across it," and the Dean and Chapter 
again produced their charter of Henry III. 1 The 
force of the king's charter at the Court of the Jus- 
tices of the Tower was of course efficient, but at the 
city Husting Court it was also efficient. The city, 
as we shall see, did not bow tamely to the commands 
of the sovereign when he attempted to override city 
rights, and it is a reasonable conclusion that the 
influence of St Paul's, as an institution of the city, 
operated in its favour. We have here the last stage 
of the folkmoot of London. 

In 1282 there was an important agreement between 
the Dean and Chapter and the Mayor (Henrie 
Sewallies) and citizens which further illustrates the 
position of St Paul's in its relation to the city, and 
incidentally shows that the complaint of 1285 just 
quoted was justified. It shows also how the 
Cathedral was setting up its walled enclosure within 
the city, and with what means it procured the sanction 
of the city. A suit was " dependinge by meanes of 
certayne shoppes builded aboute walles of the greate 
churchyearde of the saide churche of St Paule was 
apeased as followeth, viz. that we, the saide Mayor 
and the citizens of London, for the good unitie of 
peace to be kept touchinge the said contentions risen 
by reason of the same shoppes which shall remayne 
charged for the healpe of the buildinge of the bridge 
accordinge to the graunte of the Kinge, shall assigne, 
in a place ceartayne and meete in the citie afforesaid 

1 Hist. MSS. Com., ix. p. 49. 



148 LONDON 

on this side the Feast of St John Baptiste in free 
preres and perpetuall almes to God and the churche 
of St Paule in London, ten markes of free and quiet 
yearely rentes towardes the newe buildinge of the 
chappie of the blessed virgine Mary at iiij common 
tearmes of the yeare to be paide and theireof under 
the forme aforesaide shall cause the said churche to 
be infeofed, which deade of infeofment wee shall 
procure as much as in us liethe to be confirmed by 
the Kinge. Also wee shall assigne five markes of 
like rentes unto a chapleine which shall selebrate for 
ever in the chappell builded over the place wheare 
the bones of the deade use to lie in the said church- 
yearde for the healthe of the said Lorde bishope, 
Deane and Chapter, mayor and citizens livinge, and 
for the eternall rest of the said benefacters of the 
same churche of St Paule deceassed. To the which 
chauntuarie or chappell as often as the same is voyde 
the mayor of the citie shall present a meate persoun 
to the Deane of St Paules churche, and trewlie se 
sincere charitie to be given and norished, as it weare 
of devote sounes unto the holly mother the cathederall 
churche. Wee the said mayor and citizens with 
good Faythe doe promise that from henche fourthe 
wittingeleye we shall doe or procure to be doune 
nothinge uniuste againste the rights and liberties 
spiritual! or tempoorall of the same our mother 
churche of St Paule, but that the said Lorde Bishopp, 
Deane, and Chapter may in all thinges justlie use 
theire ould libertie, more over we doe promise by 



THE INSTITUTION OF THE CITY 149 

lawful stipulation that we shall make or cause to be 
made all maner of drops of water of the said shopes 
to be tourned away towardes the Kinges hieway, leaste 
any doe distille into the churchyearde or uppon the 
walls of the same, wheareby the same may receave 
hurte or to be made worse, and that we shall nott 
permite butchers, poticaris, gouldsmithes, cookes, or 
comon women to dwell in the same shopps by whose 
noyse or tumulte or dishonestie the quietnes or devo- 
tion of the ministers of the churche may be troubled, 
nor also shall suffer those which shall dwell in the 
said shopps to burne any seacooles in the same or such 
other thinges which doe stinke. More over at our 
owne charges we shall cause all the coffins of the 
bodies laetlye buried in the toumbes or hollow places 
of the outer part of the walle, towardes the north to 
be decentlie buryed or put at the leaste in three honest 
graves under so many tombes or hollowe places in 
the inner side of the same walle, and the said outward 
toumbes or hollowe places to stope up with lime and 
stone, moreover we, the said mayor and many of 
the Alderemen of the saide cittie, as fer as to our owne 
persons dothe aperteayne, doe graunte, and with good 
faythe doe promise to doe our best indevor with the 
commons of the said cittie, that it may be graunted 
unto the said Deane and Chapter that they may shutt 
all the gaets of the South Churche yearde of the 
Church of St Paule every night after courphew is 
ronge, so that they shall be opened early every day 
againe, that we shall not sett, procure, or cause to 



150 



LONDON 




be sett any more shoppes without or beyonde the 
boundes conteyned in the charter or deadde of our 
Lorde the Kinge for the buildinge of the same shopes 
made, viz. beyounde the gate againste Ivey Laine 
towardes the west." 1 

It is important to note that this agreement, dated 
at Guildhall on the morrow of All Saints 1282, was 
between the mayor and citizens, and that the mayor 

and aldermen were to do 
their best to persuade the 
commonalty to agree. The 
action of the mayor and 
aldermen is normal ; the in- 
troduction of the common- 
alty to sanction what was 
done, when it was done, is a 
new feature in documentary 
history, but probably not in 
actual practice. Such cases 
do not disprove that the controlling force of the city 
was the power of the mayor and aldermen and the 
possession of city courts of law. 

The law was the law of London, not the law of 
the realm, and there are cases which show these two 
systems in direct antagonism. Thus there was a 
sharp dispute arising out of the charter of Edward I. 
fixing the national weights to be used for foreign 
goods and merchandise, the city declaring the custom 
of London "from time immorial" and urging that 

1 Hist. MSS. Com., ix. pp. 50-51. 




Later mayoralty seal of the City 
of London, 1 381. 



THE INSTITUTION OF THE CITY 151 

" we cannot nor ought to change the customs of the 
city." The king promptly issued his writ insisting on 
the city executing his command and summoned the 
mayor and sheriffs to Westminster. 1 Again the 
year book of Edward II. reports a citizen pleading 
the criminal law of the state against the city 
jurisdiction. 

London law has never been codified. It comes to 
us through the recorded cases, and the cases are 
adjudicated according to the tenets of unwritten laws, 
resident only in the memories and teachings of the 
civic authorities. The Court of Aldermen, as it is 
called to this day, is a unique municipal institution. 
It was the administrative centre of London law, and 
everywhere in the records we find this dominant 
note. It is a remarkable note. The commonalty 
do not come in. There is no idea of the popular 
legal assembly of the Anglo-Saxons. There is only 
the restricted magistracy of the Court of Aldermen. 
Its English title might have displaced the more 
ancient Roman title, as Mr Coote has argued, but 
Dr Liebermann's way of putting the question of 
derivation is far more reasonable. " From a genetic 
point of view the names describing this rank seem the 
earliest of all, especially those which, founded on old 
age and its long experience, stand next to nature." 2 
This has reference to the national council, but it is 

1 Letter Book, temp. Edward I. and II. , pp. 1 27-9. 

2 Liebermann, The National Assembly in the Anglo-Saxon Period, 

p. 9- 



152 



LONDON 



equally applicable to that of the city. Tn historic 
times the distinction of age gave way to that of 
superiority — the chief men. The institution in its 
working form is distinctly non-English. Its powers 
are very considerable, and entirely of its own choos- 
ing. It deals with the recalcitrant citizen, with the 
fraudulent tradesman, and with the intruding at- 
tempts of the crown 
and the king's 
courts of justice. 
All through the 
Norman and Planta- 
genet period its 
power is strongly 
felt. It crops up 
at all points where 
attempts are made 
to extend the 
powers of other branches of the city institutions, and 
it continues its power until the end. 

A second controlling force was through the agency 
of the gilds. The question of the origin of gilds 
has always been a disputed point among authorities, 
and I differ from them all. There is wanted in the 
first place a vera causa for their establishment. Why 
was the gild organisation required if the city organisa- 
tion was still in existence, was still powerful ? Apart 
from the fascinating proposition that gilds come 
direct from the Roman collegia, for which I see no 
sufficient evidence, there are two periods, the Anglo- 




Baker at work, Guildhall MSS., assisa panis. 



THE INSTITUTION OF THE CITY 153 

Saxon and the Norman, which are referred to by 
different authorities as pre-eminently the birth-time 
of the English gild. We may talk of the English 
gild, because it is generally recognised as a peculiarly 
English institution in origin, and English also in its 
growth and continuation. But we may not give to 
it anything more than a subordinate place in London 




Baker drawn to pillory, Guildhall MSS., assisa pants. 

governance. It is English, therefore, in the same 
manner as we have seen other English innovations 
within the city system of London. 

I have indicated already that in my opinion the 
great city law of King Athelstan's time may be taken 
as the origin of the gild system. 1 Two things were 
happening in London at the time when London took 
the momentous step of getting royal approval to this 

1 See also Toulmin Smith's English Gilds, Brentano's intro- 
duction, p. xcix. 



154 LONDON 

London law. One of these things was that the 
organisation of the country on the Anglo-Saxon 
tribal system, based upon kinship law and rights, 
and not upon individual law and rights, had passed 
from the administration of purely tribal matters to 
matters affecting citizenship, which were not tribal. 
The second of these things was that the burghal 
organisation of the English towns was based upon 
this same kinship system, and having made them 
into agricultural communities of the English type, as 
at York, Colchester, Winchester, Lincoln, and other 
places founded on Roman sites, it was being used 
for the protection of their developing trade. The 
burghal organisation did not quite satisfy the condi- 
tions of this dual condition of life as between city 
and village community. Burghers in trade could not 
meet agriculturists, who were also tribal kinsmen, 
upon equal terms, and the institution of the gild was 
an absolute necessity. 

In London the difficulty was of a different kind. 
London was not Englished as York and other cities 
were Englished. She was still organised upon city 
lines. She still, as we have seen, retained much of 
her actual Roman machinery of government. But 
into her city life had penetrated the incoming Saxon. 
The leading Saxons conformed readily enough to 
London city law, became Londoners by faith as well 
as by desire. The lesser folk came into London 
carrying with them, as we have also seen, their English 
customs and ideas, their folkmoot, and their restless 



THE INSTITUTION OF THE CITY 155 

criticism of affairs into which their lives did not enter. 
These lesser folk were the danger to the city organisa- 
tion, and I have pointed out that the city law in 
meeting this danger met it by a piece of magnificently 
bold statesmanship in the institution of an organisation 
of artificial kinship, suitable for the city requirements, 
but which did not belong to city institutions as they 
had come down from the ages. 

It changed its note, but not its purpose, as the 
centuries rolled on. The city had new difficulties 
to meet. The Norman sokes were eating into the 
organisation of the city. The royal sanction to 
foreign traders was not in accord with the interests 
of the city, as the city understood its interests. And 
so the foeship of the earliest gild passed into the 
protective commercial clauses of the later gilds. 
Gilds in both cases were up against something to 
which the city was opposed. Foeship was still the 
note, not friendship, and in order to gain the key 
not only to the origin of gilds, but to their opera- 
tions and their development, this must be kept in 
mind. 

The development of the gilds could never have 
been quite an easy matter in London. The mayor 
and aldermen had always regulated trading and 
commercial matters, and now that trade and com- 
merce were becoming more and more specialised 
under the genius of the Norman Londoners, the 
gild institution claimed to be utilised for a new 
purpose. Before the Norman house had passed its 



156 LONDON 

rule on to the Plantagenets we see the struggle 
commencing. For instance, it took place with the 
weavers. This gild had obtained from Henry I. 
the privilege that nobody, except by becoming a 
member of the gild, shall introduce himself within 
the city into their mystery, and nobody within 
Southwark, or other places belonging to London, 
except he be a member of their gild, and these 
privileges were confirmed by Henry II. The city 
rebelled against these privileges. King John tried 
to suppress the gild by the city paying twenty marks 
in money for a gift in place of the eighteen marks 
paid by the gild. That this proceeding did not 
succeed is shown by what happened as early as 
1221-22, when the weavers, as Maddox relates, 
" fearing lest the mayor and citizens of London 
should extort from them their charter and liberties 
granted to them by King Henry II., delivered that 
charter into the Exchequer, to be kept in the Treasury 
there, and to be delivered to them again when they 
should want it, and afterwards to be laid up in the 
Treasury." 

This interesting case shows the changes which were 
taking place. The crown and its advisers cared not 
for city institutions as London had inherited them. 
They cared for sokes and privileged groups, not for a 
great and powerful city. They did not win in the 
fight, however. Citizenship and gildship resided very 
much in the same personalities. We find the city exer- 
cising functions wherever the gilds did not, or could 



THE INSTITUTION OF THE CITY 157 

not, exercise them ; the city came to the assistance of 
the gilds when they had to fight against a non-gilds- 
man on questions of privilege ; the city resisted the 
attempts of the crown to control trading matters, and 
boldly declared that where gilds or traders went wrong 
city law was sufficient to deal with the delinquents. 
And in this way we get the gradual working together 
of city and gilds, the encroachment of gildship upon 
the more ancient free citizenship ; finally the welding 
of the gild organisation with the city organisation. 
The victory therefore is largely, not completely, with 
the gilds. But let us note that if it is victory, the 
victory of an English institution over a city institution 
which was not English, there is no evidence whatever 
in London, though there is in other English cities, of 
a development of municipal into gild organisation. 
It is struggle all through, and though the gilds won 
their position they did not destroy municipal power, 
municipal tradition, or municipal law. 

This is demonstrable from the whole tenor of the 
records. The weavers might claim a royal charter, 
but, royal charter or not, they had to obey city law. 
The power and process of city law is to be seen 
in actual working. A writ comes from Henry V. 
(5th February 1416-17) to the mayor and aldermen, 
that they take measures for the strict observance of 
the ordinance or agreement presenting the particular 
kind of work to be executed severally by cordewaners 
and cobelers, and that they punish offenders in ac- 
cordance with the terms of the said ordinance and the 



158 



LONDON 



custom of the city. 1 The answer of the city is decisive. 
It was made by Richard Merlawe, the mayor, and the 
aldermen, and was to the effect that by immemorial 
custom of the city the mayor and aldermen were in 
the habit of causing any ordinance affecting artificers 
in the city which proved to be prejudicial to the 
common good to cease to be observed. This was 
followed by a still more drastic step. On 6th January 
1417-18 the ordinance was annulled at a general 

court held at the Guildhall, 
" inasmuch as it was contrary 
to the commonweal." 2 City 
immemorial custom, not king's 
writ or king's law, is the 
controlling power ; common 
good, not gild ordinances, is 
the governing factor ; and in 
this single example the whole 
case of city government and gild organisation is 
contained. 

Common good included the strictest line of honesty 
in trade. Many entries in the city archives certify to 
this, and the pillory and the stocks are brought into 
requisition against those who do not conform to the 
city standard of conduct. In 1352 an ordinance had 
been in existence since the reign of Edward I. pre- 
scribing that "fishmongers of the city of London and 




Fourteenth-century seal of the 
Lord Mayor of London. 



1 Calendar of Letter Books, vol. i. p. 187. Cf. Riley, Memorials 
of London Life, pp. 571-4, for the original ordinance. 

2 Calendar, op. cit., p. 194. 



THE INSTITUTION OF THE CITY 159 

their partners should see that their baskets," inter 
alia, were not "dubbed, that is to say, have good fish 
placed at the top and inferior kind placed beneath 
them" ; and in 1354 an entry notifies the appointment, 
" by the good folk of the craft," of three " girdlers 
and citizens of London to rule and survey the said 
craft, that it be well and properly preserved in all 
points." 1 I must quote one other example because 
of the interest of the subject matter. In 1374 
" Henry Clerke, John Dyke, William Tanner, and 
Thomas Lucy, tapicers and masters of the trade of 
tapicers in London, caused to be brought here a coster 
of tapestry wrought upon the loom after the manner 
of work of arras and made of false work by Katharine 
Duchewoman in her house at Fynkslane, being 4 
yards in length and 7 quarters in breadth : seeing 
that she had made it of linen thread beneath but 
covered with wool above in deceit of the people and 
against the ordinance of the trade aforesaid, and they 
asked that the coster might be adjudged to be false, 
and for that reason burnt according to the form of 
the articles of their trade as here in the Chamber 
enrolled." 2 The mayor, recorder, and certain of the 
aldermen heard and decided the case against the 
false tapestry. 

Entries such as these are frequent, 3 and that the 

1 Letter Book, 1350-1370, pp. 64, 69. 

2 Riley, Memorials of London, p. 375. 

3 Another good instance relating to the same gild in 1344 is 
given in Letter Book, 1337-1352, p. 99. 



160 LONDON 

officers of mediaeval London were expected to be 
as free from interested influences as are those of 
this age, the following regulation of 1419 will show, 
by comparison with the " Act for the better pre- 
vention of corruption " passed in the sixth year of 
King Edward VII. (cap. 34): "Forasmuch as it is 
not becoming or agreeable to propriety that those 
who are in the service of reverend men, and from 
them or through them have the advantage of befit- 
ting food and raiment, as also of reward or remunera- 
tion in a competent degree, should after a perverse 
custom be begging aught of people like paupers ; and 
seeing that in times past every year at the Feast 
of Our Lord's Nativity, according to a certain custom 
which has grown to be an abuse, the vadlets of the 
Mayor, the Sheriffs, and the Chamber of the said city 
— persons who have food, raiment, and appropriate 
advantages resulting from their office — under colour 
of asking for an oblation, have begged many sums 
of money of brewers, bakers, cooks, and other 
victuallers, and in some instances have more than 
once threatened wrongfully to do them an injury if 
they should refuse to give them something ; and 
have frequently made promises to others that, in 
return for a present, they would pass over their 
unlawful doings in much silence, to the great dis- 
honour of their masters, and to the common loss of 
all the city " ; and then follows the penalty, which is 
loss of office. 1 

1 Riley, Memorials of London, p. 670. 



THE INSTITUTION OF THE CITY 161 

That the city looked after the personal require- 
ments is shown by several amusing cases, of which I 
will quote one. Letters patent under the seal of the 
mayoralty were issued, 39 Edward III. (1365), "cer- 
tifying that John de Radeclive, born in the parish of 
St Botolph without Aldersgate, had a portion of his 
left ear bitten off by a savage horse belonging to his 
master, and in order that his character might not 
suffer by incurring the suspicion of his having been 
punished for theft or other matter, the said John 
had prayed them to testify to the truth, which they 
hereby do." 1 

Plantagenet London was a city enclosed by its 
walls, kept in order by the citizens. It is de- 
scribed in many passages in the Chronicles. The 
city records contain priceless evidence of the topo- 
graphy of inner London through documents pre- 
sented at the Hustings Court, and those read in 
the Guildhall before the mayor, and perhaps the 
inquisition " as to who is or are bound by right 
to repair the bridge of Walebrok near Boke- 
relesbre" of 1291 is one of the best examples. 2 
The public records would yield a great many facts 
for extra London topography if they could be 
collated and arranged for such a purpose. Thus, 
among the charters of the Duchy of Lancas- 
ter (1174-1189) is a grant in fee to Henry de 
Cornhell of a " mill next to the Tower of London 

1 Letter Book, 1350-1370, p. 125. 

2 Letter Book, temp. Ed. /., pp. 177-179. 

11 



162 LONDON 

in Stebbehive." 1 In a petition to Parliament at 
Carlisle in 35 Edward I. the Earl of Lincoln stated 
that in old times ten or twelve ships used often to 
come up to Fleet Bridge with merchandise, and some 
even to Holborn Bridge. 2 Manorial records form a 
third source of information on this subject, and that 
they relate wholly to extra London and not to the 
city is an important fact. They give evidence of 
the usual kind, and where they have been examined 
in detail, as in the case of the manor of Tooting Bee, 
they yield not only topographical but historical and 
economic information of great value. 3 

One further illustration of this period must be 
noted. London has begun to take rank among 
historians with other English cities, and no longer 
stands alone. In the chronicle of Richard of Devizes 
there is a remarkable picture of English cities of the 
time of King John, that is, toward the end of the 
twelfth century, which is sufficiently useful to quote. 
A vile French Jew recommends an unfortunate young 
cobbler to pass through London quickly, since every 
nation has introduced into that city its vices and bad 
manners. He is to avoid Canterbury, because the 
shrine of the lately canonised archbishop attracted 
crowds of vagrants : " Everywhere they die in open 
day by the streets for want of bread and employment. 

1 Report of Deputy Keeper of Public Records, xxxv. p. 1 6. 

2 Rot. Pari, i. p. 200, No. 59, quoted in Stanley's Mem. of West- 
minuter, p. 6. 

3 The Manor Rolls of Tooting Bee, published by the London 
County Council 



THE INSTITUTION OF THE CITY 163 

Rochester and Chichester are mere villages, and they 
possess nothing for which they should be called cities 
but the sees of their bishops. Oxford scarcely sus- 
tains its clerks. Exeter supports men and beasts with 
the same grain. Bath is placed, or rather buried, in 
the lowest parts of the valleys in a very dense atmo- 
sphere and sulphury vapour, as it were at the gates 
of Hell. Nor yet will you select your habitation in 
the northern cities— Worcester, Chester, Hereford— 
on account of the desperate Welshmen. York 
abounds in Scots, vile and faithless men, or rather 
rascals. The town of Ely is always putrefied by the 
surrounding marshes." He then goes on to advise 
the poor apprentice cobbler not to visit Durham, 
Norwich, Lincoln, Bristol, nor the rural districts— 
especially Cornwall— and finally directs him to Win- 
chester, which is " the city of cities, the mother of 
all, the best of all." 1 It is only by scraps of history 
like this that we can ascertain how London was re- 
garded at this time. 2 

We are at a half stage here. We cannot quite 
understand it in its relationship to what has preceded 
it and what will follow it. A charter-granting 
sovereign, a sovereign who sends writs to the city on 
questions of city governance ; a city which is working 
through a gild system as distinct from a municipal 

1 Richard of Devizes, De Rebus Gestis Ricardi primi, Rolls edit., 
vol. iii. pp. 437-8. 

2 There is an interesting description of Plantagenet London in 
the Introduction to the Chroniques de London ^ Henry III. to 17 
Edw. III. (Camden Soc), pp. xi-xviii. 



164 LONDON 

system, a city which has its immemorial custom 
converted into charter grants — is evidently different 
from what it was in Anglo-Saxon times. The 
extent of such difference and its effect upon the 
life of London must be the subject of an additional 
chapter. 



CHAPTER VII 



CITY AND STATE 



After the institution of the city within the state 
there were still things to be worked out. It is 
important to bear in mind that this working-out of 





Seal of Henry II. 

the problem is by the city, and not through the 
commanding statecraft of the sovereign power — 
neither king nor parliament. It is a pure working- 
out between the city and the state. Our commenc- 
ing point is the relationship between the city and 
the representative of the state, the sovereign king. 
Plantagenet kings took their share in the govern- 
ment of the kingdom, meeting difficulties of all kinds 
in the whirlpool of continental events. They were 
not men to stand much trifling, to bow to powers 

165 



106 



LONDON 




Seal of Henry III. 



within the realm which claimed, or acted as if they 
claimed, a sort of equality with them. And yet 
this is what we see going on. The strong hand of 
Henry II. and Edward I., the unscrupulous hand 

of Henry III., took the city 
sadly to task, and we seem to 
see it bending to the sovereign 
will. But its time came again. 
Corporations never die, and 
kings do. The last of the 
Plantagenets, bold, brave, able 
as he was, bent the knee to 
London, and in his person, as 
he is outlined by Shakespeare, is shown the con- 
tinuity of city polity right down to the end of the 
feudal period. 

It is quite true to say that the chief evidence for 
this is derived from the weak 
places in English sovereignty, 
but it is not true to assume 
from this that London was 
simply taking advantage of 
these favourable opportunities 
to advance unconstitutional 
claims. As we are reminded 
by Mr Lucas, Sir Matthew 

Hale declared that he was unable to understand 
the form of government anterior to Henry III., 
and Holborne, the junior counsel in Hampden's 
great case, said with considerable justification that the 




Seal of Henry III. 



CITY AND STATE 167 

government in those early times was more by force 
than by law. 1 Under the Norman and Plantagenet 
sovereignty we find the claim of London to take a 
prominent part in the election of the king to be 
silently exercised and silently acquiesced in. If the 
kings with strong personalities and with unquestioned 
right of succession by inheritance minimised the city's 
claim or ignored it, the city answered by accepting 
this situation and awaiting new opportunities. And 
when the position of the king was weak, and London's 
help was needed, the help was given on the ancient 
and accepted lines. In the case of Stephen, London 
may have overstepped the ancient lines, but even 
here we shall not find a misuse of the power, and we 
shall not find later examples improving upon or even 
following this precedent. In every direction the 
working of the city institution was normal, and it 
corresponded with the working of the sovereign 
institution. 

The new and imposing policy to be introduced by 
William, the great conqueror, has been noted. It 
was ushered in by a strict conforming to ancient 
custom, and the English cry of "Aye, aye" at the 
coronation ceremony was the formal acceptance by 
London of the new sovereign. Once more the king 
accepted by the nation became the king accepted by 
London. There is nothing of importance to mark 
the acceptance of the next two monarchs, but the 
election of Stephen to be king was a remarkable 

1 W. W. Lucas, The Corporate Nature of English Sovereignty, p. 8. 



1G8 LONDON 

event. Freeman will have it that London, on this 
and similar occasions, represented the nation — the 
nation assembled at London ; but there is little or no 
direct evidence of this, and the contrary evidence of 
London exercising ancient surviving city rights is 
overwhelming. No doubt in this case London went 
too far. It entered on the task of election instead 
of keeping to that of acceptance of the duly elected 
king ; but in William of Malmesbury's account of 
Matilda's temporarily successful attempt to assume 
the position of empress, we are brought back again 
to the position of the sovereign obtaining the 
acquiescence of London. The story may be stated 
briefly. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, a.d. 1135, is 
the first authority. " Stephen de Blois came to 
London ; and the London folk received him, and 
sent after the archbishop William Curboil and con- 
secrated him king on midwinter day." The exten- 
sion of this record occurs in the Gesta Stephani, and 
it is deliberately stated that " the aldermen and wise 
folk gathered together the folkmoot, and there, pro- 
viding at their own will for the good of the realm, 
unanimously resolved to choose a king," which solemn 
deliberation ended in the choice of Stephen. There 
can be no question that this ceremony was an election. 
Stephens charter of 1136 opens with the words, " Ego 
Stephanus Dei gratia assensu cleri et populi in regem 
Anglorum electus," and he alludes to this election in 
his passionate outburst against those who revolted 
against him in 1137. 



CITY AND STATE 169 

It will be noted that London acted through the 
folkmoot. It is not possible to say what the precise 
meaning of this is, having regard to what has been 
already said about the folkmoot and its subordinate 
position in city institutions, but it is at least likely 
that it was used on this occasion to further the 
particular end desired. This is confirmed by the 
remarkable proceedings in 1141 recorded by William 
of Malmesbury, when Matilda had achieved her 
temporary success in the field and sought to be 
proclaimed empress. The Londoners were sent for 
because from the importance of their city in England 
they were almost nobles (quasi optimates), and when 
the Londoners came they explained that they were 
sent from the community of London to ask for the 
liberation of King Stephen. 

It is not necessary to pursue the details further. 
They show at every point that London claimed to 
have the sovereign that had been elected by them, 
and not the sovereign who claimed by the right of 
victory and by the support given to her by the pope. 
They show London to be successful in the end. 
They show the optimates of London and not the 
folkmoot to be the governing power, and they give 
an altogether remarkable picture of a definite and 
constitutional relationship between London the city 
and the national sovereign. 

Through all the subsequent dynastic troubles 
London is ever in the fore, though never again in 
quite so strong a position. It took part in the formal 



170 



LONDON 




i 



Seal of Richard III. 



deposition of Richard II. ; it helped Henry IV. to 
the throne ; it acted in such a way at the choosing of 
Richard III. as to provide Shakespeare with an ever- 

memorable scene. This was 
the last act in a very long 
series. It was purely artificial, 
obviously got up to serve a 
purpose. The very fact that 
it could have been appealed 
to on such an occasion, and 
in such a fashion, is evidence 
that the resort to the old 
formula, when it could have been nothing but a 
formula, shows how strong and how important the 
formula had been. 

Against these examples of success in exercising 
ancient rights has to be set 
the witness of London in- 
dubitably struggling against 
what it believed to be an in- 
sidious innovation upon its 
older independence. The 
struggle was long and con- 
tinuous, but never factious 
and petty. This is illustrated 
in several ways, and in the relationship of the city 
to the Tower of London we see the process at work 
in a singularly curious manner. The city will not 
attend at the Tower except under very definite 
protective rights, and with very definite ceremonial 




Seal of Richard III. 



CITY AND STATE 



171 




Seal of Edward II. 



conditions. The Tower is not only the king's as a 
defensive protection to London from the Thames 
side, but it is a symbol, and an effective and operative 
symbol, of the king's power . 4i 

against the city. The Planta- 
genet king sought by increas- 
ing the strength of the Tower I 
to bring the city under his ' 
control. The citizens deter- 
mined otherwise. They could 
not decline to recognise the 
Tower. It was a constitutional 
institution as well as a military fortress. But their 
precautions were full and significant. They would 
not step from citizen ground to king's ground 
without protection, and in the end we have the 

remarkable fact that the citi- 
zens imposed their rules upon 
the Tower authorities when 
they were required to enter 
the Tower, and they imposed 
rules when the sovereign 
wanted to enter the city, rules 
which Queen Victoria and 
King Edward obeyed as in- 
teresting survivals of London's ancient position. 
London indeed was never the seat of sovereignty 
under English rule, and we get a touch of realism 
on this point in a letter from Edward II. to Aylmer 
de Valence desiring his attendance at Westminster 




Seal of Edward II. 



172 



LONDON 




Seal of Richard II. 



to advise on certain matters, and directing him to 
come by Lambeth, where boats shall be prepared 
to carry him to the palace. 1 The city understood 
,-. - well enough the policy of the 

state. A great monarch like 
Edward I., powerful because 
he was never tyrannical, would 
take command of the city into 
his own hands, teach it the 
lesson of obedience to the state, 
and then restore it to its proper 
measure of civic status. A 
tyrant monarch, as John and Henry III. were, 
would act quite differently, and would act from the 
Tower. Few things are more remarkable in civic 
history than the events which 
stand out from these typical 
episodes. Even the bound- 
aries of the Tower and its 
precincts had to be precisely 
set out for constitutional pur- 
poses. They are described in 
a document of 4 Richard II. 
as follows : " The Franchise of 
the Tower stretcheth from the 
water side unto the end of Pety Wales to the 
end of Tower Streete, and so streight North unto 
a mud wall ; and from thence straight East unto the 
wall of the Cittie ; and from thence to the Posterne 

1 Report of Deputy Keeper of Public Records, viii. p. 184. 




Seal of Richard II. 




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CITY AND STATE 173 

South ; and from thence straight to a great Elme, 
before the abbot of Tower hills rent ; and from 
thence to an other Elme standing upon the Tower 
ditch ; and from that Elme alonge by a mud wall 
streight forth into Thamys." l And this question 
of boundary was important in many ways, settling 
amongst other things the jurisdiction of the city and 
the king in legal cases. It arose on several occasions, 
and there are curious accounts of boundary disputes 
in 1582 and 1626 which illustrate the necessity for 
the formal determination of its limits. 2 

One other feature in illustration of the relationship 
of city and state must be referred to. The method 
of trading by intermunicipal agreement instead of by 
national law has been noted in connection with its 
obvious parallel to the methods of the Roman cities 
of the Empire under Roman law. It was in force 
during the Anglo-Saxon period, and did not originate 
in Anglo-Saxon polity. It was in force during 
Norman and Plantagenet times simply by way of 
continuation of a well-understood practice, and because 
the state had imposed no other method. The later 
practice can be illustrated from city documents. From 
these it is clear that the definite and clear sanction 
for the recovery of citizens' goods or debts was reprisal 
— and municipal, not personal, reprisal. The English 
state had not entered into this question, perhaps was 
not conscious of its existence, or at all events of the 

1 Arckceohgia, vol. xviii. p. 280. 

2 Remembrancia, pp. 4.34. and 445 ; and see Letter Book, vol. i. p. 3. 



174 LONDON 

necessity of bringing it within the law of the land. 
In this way London and the cities fell back upon the 
provisions of Roman law, and there cannot be a 
doubt that in London at least these provisions had 
obtained continuously from Roman times. 

It is worth while showing the actual working of 
this institution from a few examples selected from 
the Calendar of Letters, 1350-1370, published by the 
corporation of the city of London. The mayor, 
aldermen, and commonalty of the city of London 
write to the city of Florence in 1350-1 that Gregorio 
Bonacursi, citizen of London, " had complained of 
having, to his no small loss and prejudice, had a large 
quantity of merchandise which he had sent into their 
country seized by certain men, as it were sons of 
iniquity, not having God before their eyes and wishing 
to stir up strife ; and whereas he had demanded that 
satisfaction should be made to him of persons and 
goods within the city of London, both present and 
to come, they are earnestly desired to cause the 
aforesaid merchandise to be restored, otherwise they 
must not complain if their countrymen be made to 
indemnify the said Gregorio in similar case." This 
is the case of a foreign city, and precisely the same 
course is adopted with an English city. Thus the 
mayor, aldermen, and commonalty of the city of 
London write to the mayor, bailiffs, and commonalty 
of Sandwyz, that is Sandwich in Kent, that they 
" had already twice desired them by letter to inquire 
into a grievous offence lately committed against 



CITY AND STATE 175 

John Tornegold the younger at Plymouth by Thomas 
Gyboun, Thomas de Chilham, maryner, Robert 
Gofaire, and other malefactors, contrary to the peace 
of the lord the king and to see justice done." They 
first of all "examined the said persons in full assembly," 
and then asked that John Tornegold should repair to 
Sandwich. He went there accordingly, "but had 
returned without remedy or recovery to his great 
loss and damage. They are therefore again especially 
desired to take this matter to heart, that friendship 
might continue between them, and that their citizens 
repairing to London might not be aggrieved through 
default of justice on their part. The Lord have 
them in His keeping." The case was taken up by a 
later mayor (1351-2), but we do not hear the final 
result. Adam Fraunceys, mayor in 1352-4, writes in 
April to the bailiffs and good folk of the town of 
Gippeswiz (Ipswich), "desiring them to restore the 
distress they had taken from Thomas Pyeke, draper 
and citizen of London " ; and again on the 7th May, 
" expressing surprise that nothing had been done," 
again making their request, " that there might be no 
occasion to write again on the same subject, nor for 
annoying their folk repairing to London owing to 
their default." * 

There is no necessity to repeat examples. The 
request is formal, addressed by the mayor and alder- 
men or by the mayor, aldermen, and commonalty of 
London to the properly entitled corporations of the 

1 Calendar of Letters, 1350-1370, pp. 3, 23, 4-9. 



176 LONDON 

other towns. The difference which occurs in the 
title of the London authority is perhaps of some 
importance. The mayor and aldermen, in almost 
all cases, address English cities, the mayor, aldermen, 
and commonalty address the foreign cities, and the 
exceptions in either case are few and unimportant, 
and perhaps to be accounted for by faults in the 
record. 1 The action, however, is entirely a municipal 
act — an intermunicipal act, in point of fact. It did 
not become municipal by any exercise of sovereign 
power. It does not appear among municipal archives 
as an innovation in municipal practice. It is already 
in existence when it is first recorded among the 
archives. Everything tends to show that it was a 
heritage from a distant past used and extended by 
London and by cities influenced by London. 

The records of the Plantagenet period, clear as 
they are upon the points we have just examined, are 
bafHing in other aspects of the relationship between 
London and the sovereignty. We have " the Acte 
for correccio of the Errours and wrong Jugege- 
mentis in London," which sets forth that " by a 
statute made in the tyme of ye noble Kyng Edward, 
ayal to our Lord the King that now ys, the yere of 
his reigne the xxviii., it was ordeined and establyshed 

1 Taking the first hundred examples in the Letter Book, 1350- 
1370, Bristol, Yarmouth, Sandwich, Horsham, and Gloucester are 
addressed by the mayor, aldermen, and commonalty, and there are 
seven foreign cities so addressed ; on the other hand, the mayor and 
aldermen alone address Sluys, Bruges, and Bayonne, and there are 
thirty-seven English cities so addressed. 



CITY AND STATE 



177 




Seal of Henry IV. 



that for this, that the errours, defautis, and mys- 
takyng yt be naturally taken and vsed in the cite 
of London for defaut of good gounauce of the 
Mair, Sherefs, and Aldirmen 
yt haue the gouernaunce of 
the said cyte," 1 the king may 
enact a fine, and as a last 
resort may take the franchise 
of the city into his hands. 

Also we have examples of 
a singular interference with 
purely domestic concerns of 
the city. A proclamation tempore Henry IV. enacts 
"that no one wander about the city after eight 
o'clock at night unless he be of good character and 
carry a light, that no one wear mask or vizor at 

Christmas, and that every 
house be lighted with a candle 
and lantern during the same 
festival, under penalty of a fine 
of fourpence. " A little later on, 
in 1405, the order was " that a 
lighted lantern is hung outside 
each house that is on the high- 
way." 2 It is surprising that a 
royal proclamation should be the source of this regu- 
lation of citizen conduct, while it took no note of 
and no part in affairs of much more importance. 

1 Arnold's Chronicle, p. 43. 

2 Calendar of Letter Books, i. (1400-1422), pp. 38, 44, 45, 83. 

12 




Seal of Henry IV. 



178 LONDON 

These facts and others of like nature go far to 
explain that city and state were in relationship 
all through the Norman and Plantagenet period 
only under the conditions of survival and struggle, 
not under the definite conditions of a settled 
polity. There were ebbings and flowings in the 
tides of that relationship, and any one of the 
great events of the period might have turned the 
stream permanently and resistlessly into directions 
different from those in which it ultimately found 
its way. The point is important, not only in 
the history of the city, but in the history of the 
state. The issues were not always municipal issues. 
They were national issues. And the very bigness 
of these issues creates a view of London history 
which requires special facts to explain its origin, 
special facts to explain its continuation, special 
facts to explain its power and its forcefulness. 
It is the combination of these sets of facts in 
relationship to each other which is capable of 
supplying the only view of London which answers 
to the historical situation. We have ascertained 
how strong was the power which twisted the line 
of continuity, and how strong was the defence which 
kept the line intact. That there was a twist and 
there was defence, however, are the essential facts 
of the case. 

The institution of the city, then, was the work of 
generations, and it was a work of struggle, not of 
peaceful development. This is seen everywhere. 



CITY AND STATE 179 

There is not a single phase of mediaeval London 
where struggle is not the main feature. And this 
is wholly in favour of the continuity of an almost 
independent London through the Anglo-Saxon 
period. The forces of mediaeval times were stronger 
than those of Anglo-Saxon times. The methods 
and the objects of the sovereign power were more 
dangerous. It was settled policy to bring London 
within the state, and London had to give in at 
several points. Not everywhere, however, and not 
always, was London compelled to surrender her 
power and her rights. The fact that she could make 
so good a fight, and come out at the end so power- 
ful, and with so much within her that, inherited as 
governance and law, was continued as custom, is 
evidence sufficient that the heritage of London 
comes from a more powerfully organised state 
government than England at any time possessed, 
was the product of a governing system which was 
foreign to the Anglo-Saxon mind. 

During all this long period London has been 
unbroken in its continuity. The line is not quite so 
straight, its twisted form betokens the struggle it 
has had, but the line is not broken. I have argued 
that the Normans did not break it by conquest any 
more than did the Danes, any more than did the 
Anglo-Saxons. Entry by consent does not include 
breakage in city life and thought. I am now in a 
position to confirm the argument by evidence pro- 
duced from the Plantagenet history of London. 



180 LONDON 

There is entire evidence of continuity in spite of 
king's charters and king's rule, in spite of encroach- 
ment by church and lords. London was too real to 
break under such forces, and we end at this stage 
with a strong note of continuity. 



CHAPTER VIII 



THE DISRUPTION OF COMMERCIALISM 

How magnificently the institution of London, welded 
as we have seen it welded out of ancient and later 




The Tower of London, temp. Henry VII. 
Royal MSS. 16, f. ii. 

materials, with the dominant note of continuity, 
answered to the requirement of the nation is strikingly 
shown throughout its early history. That history 
has now to be considered in relationship to what 
followed, and this I think has never been understood. 

181 



182 LONDON 

It shows a considerable deflection from the past, but 
it remains a continuation from the past. The break- 
away from the main principle of communal life was 
complete ; the entry into the new commercial life was 
just as complete. The new commercial city kept 
alive its ancient communal insignia, used its communal 
functions on supreme occasions when they were re- 
quired, but its older collective citizenship had to give 
way to the new individualism. Tt took orders from 
Tudor sovereign and Tudor ministers, looked to state 
courts and state law for settlement of problems once 
in the province of its own municipal law to settle 1 — 
performed all these inconsistencies without in form 
actually destroying the essential features of its ancient 
system. 

In substance there was destruction. A ghastly 
sort of chasm seems to arise between Tudor London 
and Plantagenet London— a chasm which has never 
been bridged, and across which it is not quite easy to 
carry the threads of continuity. Continuity existed 
still. This must be insisted upon. But it was not 
the same continuity. It was a continuity by way of 
custom, not by way of policy. The city followed its 
old forms, but only as customs, frequently with no 
institutional meaning in them, and with considerably 
shortened powers. The change came from the 
sovereignty. The old relationship to the crown was 
between "the Mayor and Aldermen " and " his lord - 

1 I quote a very good example in connection with the Tower of 
London in relation to the city in my Making of London, p. 1 9S. 



DISRUPTION OF COMMERCIALISM 183 

ship the King." The new relationship was between 
" my lord Mayor " and " His Majesty," or the ministers 
of His Majesty. Lordship and majesty are great titles. 
They are great and silent powers working towards a 
dividing line, and which have the fatal characteristic 
of feeding upon their own growth. They indicate a 
settled change, not only in the relationship of city 
and state, but in the conception of the state itself. 
We have had to note one great change from a state 
system to that of lordship. We have now to note 
an even greater change from the communal system 
to the commercial system. 

The change in the national sovereignty and the 
state was fundamental. Dr Hill describes it in an 
extremely useful way. He points out that " for 
centuries Christendom was conceived of as one great 
state in which the nature and relations of the feudal, 
and afterward the national, monarchies were obscured 
by their acknowledged dependence upon a common 
superior, the Holy Roman See ; within the circle of 
Christendom, authority both civil and spiritual was 
conceived of as descending from a divine source 
through the rulers whom God had established. Of 
the territorial state possessing sovereignty in itself 
there could therefore be no conception." And then, 
after an examination of the new juristical doctrines 
of Bodin in France and Althuesius in Germany, he 
concludes : " It is the state, however, and not merely 
the royal personage who constitutes its head, that now 
and henceforth will claim attention. In the feudal 



184 LONDON 

age there was no conception of a state. Society was 
then composed of a hierarchy of persons bound 
together in relations of vassalage and suzerainty. In 
the development of the national monarchies the kings 
gradually concentrated in their own hands all public 
authority by absorbing in their own persons the pre- 
rogatives of the feudal lords." 1 

Hitherto the events of London have all belonged 
to London. However trivial and however great, they 
were London in origin, London in meaning, London 
in effect. They belonged to that great mass of 
historic event which proceeded in its magnificent 
and solid way from age to age, carrying on the con- 
tinuous story, as 1 have indicated in former chapters. 
Now there is to tell a different state of things. Not 
every event in London is a London event. Not 
every event marches along with the stately pageant 
of London history. An outside power is there, a 
power as great as it is remarkable. It appears at the 
hands of the successive Tudor sovereigns, all of them 
remarkable men and women. It appears at the hands 
of ministers of the crown, all of them remarkable men. 
It appears at the hands of the men of Devon, the 
men of Dorset, men from the east and men from the 
west, men who come not to toil and work in London 
on London lines, not to work in connection with 
London at all, but to work for the new conception of 
industry and trade in which London would have 
only an incidental part. It had become a national 

1 D. J. Hill, History of Diplomacy, vol. ii. pp. 491, 517. 




SIR THOMAS MORE, 
From the drawing by Hans Holbein, at Windsor Castle. 



DISRUPTION OF COMMERCIALISM 185 

trade, and London would only have so much of it 
as would flow to it along the track of the ocean 
ships. (See Appendix V.) 

Up to this point we have been dealing with London 
events by the light of the ever-recurring formula, 
" according to ancient custom." From this point we 
are to have continuity of London events as an in- 
teresting or previously unnoted circumstance — an 
occasional continuity based upon the whims of the 
moment, not upon the polity of London. The change 
is fundamental. Perhaps it was being prepared for 
during the last chaotic days of Plantagenet kingship, 
but it seems to come suddenly and with strange 
silence. We come upon it with no surprise, no 
regret, no welcome. It is there and it is accepted. 

Although this seems to be the reading of the times, 
we are sure there is something behind it all — some- 
thing as voiced in the philosophic regrets of Sir 
Thomas More to changes which, in many ways, he 
understood ; in the political dislikes of Cardinal Pole 
to changes which he did not understand at all ; in the 
religious objections of Erasmus to changes of which he 
but dimly saw the outcome. Erasmus did not under- 
stand the execution of More, neither the principle for 
which More fought and died, nor the necessity of the 
king in determining the execution. The something 
behind all this is the disappearance once for all of 
the ancient English system of social and political 
organisation, and the incoming of a new system, 
English in that it was adopted by the English 



186 LONDON 

people, continental in that it came in with the 
sweeping force of European influence. 

There is not much room for the exercise of civic 
powers in this new order of things. The city had 
taken its share in producing this new line of political 
development. It had now to give way to the state 
it had helped to create. The state is to be every- 
where and to do everything. And its claim is sub- 
scribed to. That in England London does not quite 
bow the head, that against the claim of the state for 
universal governance there still remains the claim of 
London to work out its own destiny on its old lines, 
are merely the signs of a final stage. London was not 
successful. It could not be, for the new powers of 
the state were derived from the forces which dis- 
rupted Europe. 

Our evidence in the future will fall under four 
principal heads, two of them belonging to the older 
history, the other two entirely new. These are : (1) 
the sovereignty in relation to the city ; (2) changed 
views of the city ; (3) commercialism of the city ; (4) 
city expansion. 

The new position of affairs in relation to the sove- 
reignty may be introduced by a delightful story first 
told by Stow of Queen Mary, and then afterwards by 
Howel of King James the First. Stow's story is of an 
alderman of London who, " whenas on a time it was 
told him by a courtier that Queene Mary in her dis- 
pleasure against London had appointed to remoue with 
the Parliament and Terme to Oxford, this playne man 



DISRUPTION OF COMMERCIALISM 187 

demanded whether she meant also to diuert the Riuer 
of Thames from London or no ? and when the Gentle- 
man had answered no, then quoth the Alderman, by 
God's grace wee shall do well enough at London what- 
soeuer become of the Tearme and Parliament." l The 
Howel version is told in his Londinopolis (p. 19), 
published in 1657, and it appears to be another 
version of the same story : " The Thames may be 
said to be London's best friend, which puts me in 
minde of a passage of drollery that happened in the 
time of King James, who. being displeased with the 
City because she would not lend him such a sum of 
money, and the Lord Mayor and the Aldermen 
attending him one day, being somewhat transported, 
he said that he would remove his own Court, with 
all the records of the Tower and the Courts of 
Westminster Hall, to another place. . . . The Lord 
Mayor calmly heard all, and at last answered, Your 
Majesty hath power to do what you please, and your 
City of London will obey accordingly ; but she 
humbly desires that when your Majesty shall remove 
your Courts, you would please to leave the Thames 
behind you." 

There is something more serious than this in the 
sovereign's attitude towards the city and its institu- 
tions. Over and over again has the city to allege its 
ancient custom against the claims of the crown to 
interfere. In 1580 the Lords of the Council desired 
to know why the ancient and honourable Feast of the 

1 Stotv, by Kingsford, vol. ii. p. 200. 



188 



LONDON 



Lord Mayor had been omitted, " without permission 
or allowance of the Privy Council," and the answer of 
the lord mayor, explaining that the omission was due 




The Guildhall about 1560, from Ralph Agas' plan. 

to the feeble state of his health, added, that " it had 
not been usual to obtain permission of Her Majesty 
or the Council to omit the feast." l If only the city 
had given some account of this ancient feast, and 
its significance among the ceremonials of the city, 

1 Remembrancia, p. 206. 



DISRUPTION OF COMMERCIALISM 189 

the petty interference of the sovereign in such 
matters would have become a secondary concern. 
There was interference almost everywhere. " Upon 
the day of the Lord Mayor taking his oath without 
the Tower gate an attempt had been made by the 
warders to take down the sword borne before the 
Lord Mayor"; 1 aldermen elected "according to 
ancient custom " were sought to be excused from 
serving by request of His Majesty; the proceedings 
at the election of lord mayor were inquired into, and 
the Court of Aldermen had to defend the action they 
had taken ; offices, some of them petty offices, were 
sought for on behalf of nominees of the crown ; the 
Tower boundaries were disputed ; even the city's 
administration of the affairs of orphans, " according 
to the laws and usages of the city," was encroached 
upon ; 2 and the whole story is in direct contrast to 
the proceedings of the past. 

We may see some of these operations in actual 
working. On the election of Alderman Billingsley 
to the office of mayor there is curious and interesting 
evidence. On the 1st September 1596 the aldermen 
write to Mr Alderman Skinner, then lord mayor, 
informing him of Her Majesty's desire that Mr 
Alderman Billingsley should not be elected to the 
office of lord mayor for the following year, and 
requesting him to repair to London not later than 
the 7th or 9th of September to confer with them 
touching his election to that office. Lord Mayor 

1 llemembrancia, p. 434. 2 Ibid., p. 307. 



190 LONDON 

Skinner, however, died on 31st December 1596, during 
his year of office, and Alderman Billingsley was elected 
in his place. Sir John Croke was then recorder, and 
he has left a MS. note-book giving the substance of 
twenty-nine speeches delivered by him to Queen 
Elizabeth and King James. One of these, delivered 
in January 1597, was " sur le presenting de Alderman 
Billingsley a le Tower in vacationem inter Christmas 
and le terme," in which he says : " In place of the 
governor lately taken from us we have proceeded to 
the election of another, before this time elegible to 
the place, and only forborne for that he was sequestered 
to some other service of Her Majesty, and yet now, 
Her Majesty vouchsafing to spare him from herself 
to serve the city, and having chosen him according 
to the charters of Her Majesty and her most noble 
progenitors granted to us, . . . we present him here 
to be admitted." On 6th February 1596-7 there was 
another speech " sur presenting Alderman Billingsley 
a sa Majesty." 1 Alderman Billingsley did not have 
an easy time of it. It was the year of the disastrous 
surrender of Calais to Spain, and the city was called 
upon to supply a contingent of two hundred men to 
recruit the garrison of the cautionary town of Flushing, 
and towards the end of the year the city was again 
called upon to fit ten ships for the public service. 
This matter was referred to a committee, and the city 
practically refused to obey the commands, pointing 
out " the great discontentment and utter discourage- 

1 Hist. MSS. Ct>7»., Chequers Court, Bucks., pp. 5-6. 



DISRUPTION OF COMMERCIALISM 191 




Sir Thomas Gresham, Lord Mayor of London ; rom the portrait by Moro 
in the National Portrait Gallery. 



192 LONDON 

ment of the common people within this citie touchinge 
their adventure in the late viage to the town at Cales 
(Cadiz)." To this the queen replied sharply. The 
city had pleaded scarcity of provisions and poverty as 
an excuse for not carrying out her recent orders. 
" Very good, let the livery companies, whose duty it 
was to find men and money when required, practise 
a little self-restraint in the coming summer (1597). 
Let them, she said, forbear giving feasts in their halls 
and elsewhere, and bestow half the money thus saved 
on the poor ; and the order of the Court of Aldermen 
went forth accordingly." x This reproof of the Tudor 
queen seems almost modern, but the result of obedi- 
ence is entirely Tudor. 

The election of aldermen also supplies an extra- 
ordinary proceeding. The case of Paul Wythypol in 
1527 brought Henry VIII. and the citizens into 
variance. The king desired Wythypol's discharge, at 
least for a time ; but the Court of Aldermen hesitated 
to accede to the request, and at the instance of 
Cardinal Wolsey sought an interview with the king. 
"To Greenwich they accordingly went (24 Feb.) by 
water, where they arrived in time to give a formal 
reception to the cardinal, who landed soon afterwards 
in his barge. After a few words had passed between 
the cardinal and the municipal officers, the former 
entered the palace whilst the latter waited in the 

1 Sharpe, London and the Kingdom, vol. i. pp. 556-559 '■> compare 
Tom of all Trades, by Thomas Powell, 1631 (New Shakspere 
Soc.), p. 165. 



DISRUPTION OF COMMERCIALISM 193 

king's great chamber till dinner-time. When that 
hour arrived they were bidden to go down to the hall, 
where the mayor was entertained at the lord steward's 
mess and the aldermen received like attention from 
the comptroller and other officers of state. Dinner 
over, the company returned to the great chamber, 
where they were kept waiting till the evening. At 
length the mayor and aldermen were bidden to the 
king's presence in his secret chamber. What took 
place there the writer of the record declares himself 
unable to say." The practical outcome was that 
Wythypol was left unmolested for a whole twelve- 
month. 1 Not even to Henry VIII., therefore, did the 
city bend absolutely, and we cannot but contrast this 
with the more painful but strikingly similar incident 
which took place when James II. was king. 2 

These are, of course, merely reminiscent notes, 
though they illustrate pretty plainly the changed 
aspect of the relationship between the city and the 
sovereignty. Henry VII. came to the throne with 
a strangely doubtful title; Henry VIII., as Freeman 
points out, is " electe, chosen, and required by all 
the three estates of this lande to take uppon hym 
the seid coronne and royall dignitie," and is the 
last English monarch to hear the formula " Yea, yea, 
yea " which confirmed his election. 3 But London is 
quite out of it in both cases. The precedent of 

1 Sharpe, London and the Kingdom, vol. i. pp. 377-378. 

2 See my Making of London, p. 208. 

3 Freeman, The Norman Conquest (second edition), vol. iii. p. 627. 

13 



194 LONDON 

Richard III. did not move Henry VII. to follow it. 
The new precedent set by Henry VIII. deliberately 
ignored London, and was not followed in any respect. 
So complete is the change that there is not even 
an echo of it, and if it were not for the fact that at 
a later period there occur events which bring back 
the old conditions, there might well be considerations 
applicable to these old conditions which might en- 
danger the completeness of the view which I am 
taking of them. 

Continuity from the ancient to the new London 
is not, however, entirely broken. Wherever the city 
dealt with matters which Tudor necessities did not 
touch, there the old tradition was openly dominant. 
The assembly of the citizens in arms at Mile End 
occupies a conspicuous place in London history. 
It is the commencing point from which to under- 
stand the position of London as a city in arms, and 
it still survives in Tudor times. Tudor plays refer to 
it, as in Beaumont and Fletcher's Knight of the Burn- 
ing Pestle, where the following passage occurs : 
" After this action I preferred was, 
And chosen city captain at Mile End, 
With hat and feather and with leading staff, 
And trained my men and brought them all off clear. 1 '' 

In the correspondence of the period we constantly 
meet with such notes as, " The city train bands went 
out to guard," and " His Majesty went to Mile End 
to see " such and such a regiment, 1 but to know the 

1 Such notes occur in a Newsletter of 11th October 16SS. Hist. 
MSS. Com., xii. (vii.) p. 214. 



DISRUPTION OF COMMERCIALISM 195 

full story of the Mile End assemblage of arms we 
must go to a definite description of such an event. 

This we may do by referring to a document of 
Henry VIII. 's reign. The details of this assembly are 
most interesting, and I will quote from the original 
record such of them as will illustrate the principle. 
The muster took place on the 8th of May in the 
thirty-first year of King Henry VIII., and the occa- 
sion was the threatened invasion of the country by 
the Roman Catholics under Reginald Pole. Henry 
was extraordinarily active, and London received his 
commands. The city obeyed in right royal style, and 
there was much planning and arranging. The " lorde 
mayor and hys brethern th' aldermen sev'rally re- 
payred to theyre wards, and there, by the othe of 
the com'on counsayll and the constables of the same 
warde, tooke the hoole nombre of all the men, 
wepons, and harnesses accordyngly." They did not 
" admytt the hole nombre as p'sones liable to mustre," 
but, after settling various details of accoutrement 
and costume, " on the viij th day of May, ev'y alder- 
man, w l hys warde yn good order of batayll, before 
vi of the clokke yn the mornyng came ynto the 
comon felde, between Myle End and Whyte Chapell, 
and than all the gonns sortyd theymselff ynto one 
place, lykwyse dyd the pykes, and the archars and 
the byll men. Than ev'y company by hymselff 
rynged and swayled yn the feld, whiche was a goodly 
thynge to be holde, ffor all the fieldes from Whyte 
Chapell to Myle Ende, and from Bednall Grene to 



196 LONDON 

Ratclyff and Stepney, were all cov'yd w' men yn 
bryght harnes w 1 glystering wepons. The batyll 
of pykes whan they stode styll semyd a great wood. 
Than ev'y company was devyded ynto iij p'tes, the 
pykes ynto iii p'tes, and so the archers and the byll 
men." Yes, it was a great sight, but let us note 
carefully that every alderman, with his ward in good 
order of battle, marched to this great muster. The 
city swordbearer, " in a convenyent dy stance behynde 
the banners," was followed by " S r Wyllyam Forman, 
Knyght and Lorde Mayer of the cytye," with " iiij 
fote men " followed by " ij Pages," and " on ev'y 
syde of the lorde mayor a good dystaunce went viij 
talle men." A good distance after the lord mayor 
rode the recorder of the city, then " the atto'neys, 
clerks, and offycers of the lawe app'teynyieng to the 
Guyldhall," the surgeons of the city, and the sheriffs. 
Here certainly is the city in arms. Custom pervades 
all the details, as we find it duly recorded in the 
city records of the ordinary muster of the watch, " as 
in tyme past hath bene accustomed." It is not a 
city merely sending its quota to the national army. 
It is the city assembled in its battle formation, 
assembled as in peace by its wards under its alder- 
men, with its chief magistrate, the lord mayor, at its 
head. The description leaves nothing to argument 
or surmise. It is set out in full, and makes con- 
tinuity along this line absolutely certain. 1 Indeed 

1 The description is printed in full in Archceologia, vol. xxxii. 
pp. 30-37. 



DISRUPTION OF COMMERCIALISM 197 

it does more than this. Such a minute description 
is not forthcoming for the earlier period, and we are 
entitled to read into the earlier records the main 
principles of this Tudor ceremonial founded on ancient 
custom. Leaving out the strictly Tudor details we 
can learn from it that the city in arms in the Barons 
War of the thirteenth century, at the Hastings fight, 
in defence against the Danes, at the Crayford fight, 
was, apart from details belonging to each period, 
organised as it was under King Henry VIII., as we 
shall find it organised on a much greater occasion 
later on, when it marched once again to defend the 
liberties of the nation. 

It is of supreme importance that we possess such 
evidences of continuity, for there is little else to note 
under the Tudors. Elsewhere we find change, the 
greatest change of all being in the realms of commerce. 
The alderman's allusion to the Thames was no fanciful 
thing. It is the key to the new conception. London 
had hitherto conducted its foreign trade by the system 
of intermunicipal agreements, and by welcoming and 
housing foreign industrial and commercial experts 
within her walls, often at the bidding of the king, 
sometimes against her own wishes. Now she was to 
carry on foreign trade in quite a different way and 
spirit. She was to obtain it in her own ships at the 
far end of the world, a new world to London and 
Europe. She was to worship at the shrine of a new 
hero, Drake, the great captain who stands out for all 
time among the greatest of Englishmen. Drake's 



198 LONDON 

world-ship was moored in the Thames, and the hearts 
of Londoners were stirred by it to their depths. It 
meant to them a new ideal for commerce and for 
English rule. And it meant something even greater, 
a new ideal of national life. Shakespeare was inspired 
to give forth this new ideal, and though his feet 
probably never trod on foreign soil, his mind went 
out to what his great countrymen were doing, and he 
trod upon foreign soil as it was represented by Drake's 
ship. Mr Fairman Ordish in his masterly account 
of Shakespeare's London has explained its inward 
significance : " Strong and new life upon a back- 
ground of heaped remains of a recent past : this was 
what greeted Shakespeare on every hand." It greeted 
him on the Thames. The great antiquary, William 
Camden, becomes eloquent when he speaks of the 
Thames as " a sure and most beautiful Roade for 
shipping," and then goes on to say that " a man would 
say that seeth the shipping there, that it is, as it were, a 
very wood of trees disbranched to make glades and let 
in light, so shaded it is with masts and sailes." * This 
may be hyperbole, as Mr Ordish suggests, but it is 
from a strain that stretches back into the remote past 
of London. Fitzstephen in the twelfth century wrote 
that " to this city from every nation under heaven 
merchants bring their commodities," and then quotes 
verses to describe the kind of wares which came up 
the Thames at this date. The Thames of Tudor 
London not only repeated the spectacle of the 

1 Ordish, Shakespeare's London, p. 12. 



DISRUPTION OF COMMERCIALISM 199 




200 LONDON 

eleventh century, but added to it new characteristics 
of its own. 

A few direct insights into London life may most 
profitably be noted from contemporary documents 
which contain not formal descriptions, but incidental 
notings of places and their occupants. The Tudor 
period is extraordinarily rich in such material, and 
contrasts strangely, in this respect as in others, with 
the period which preceded it. Thus in the examina- 
tion of Gabriel Tomlinson, aged twenty-one or there- 
abouts, servant to Richard Edwards, draper, in con- 
nection with the Essex Rebellion, it is stated that 
" upon Sunday the eighth of February, being then 
in a window in his master's house in Gracious Street, 
about 12 o'clock of the day, did there see the Earl of 
Essex with a great company of men about him, and 
did hear the Earl with a very loud voice say that the 
crown of England was sold to Spain," and his master, 
Richard Edwards, draper, also deposed that he 
" could not certainly hear every word that the Earl 
of Essex did speak, but he saw him and heard him 
speak with a ' gast ' countenance and like a man 
forlorn, and said, with a loud voice, ' You should not 
be cosined so or conicatched so ' ; and then spake of 
Sir Walter Raleigh, he could not certainly understand 
what, the confusion of the noise was so great ; but 
heard him say that the crown of England was sold to 
the Infanta or King of Spain, or words to that effect, 
and that they should believe honest and religious 
men and not be ' conicatched,' and used much speech 



DISRUPTION OF COMMERCIALISM 201 

to that effect." 1 The drapers' shops in Gracechurch 
Street appear more real to us when they are revealed 
in this fashion, and Bishop Latimer's words seem 
to come home more deeply : " Now what shall we 
say of these rich citizens of London ? what shall I 
say of them ? Shall I call them proud men of 
London, malicious men of London, merciless men of 
London ? . . . London was never so ill as it is now. 
In times past men were full of pity and compassion, 
but now there is no pity. In times past when any rich 
man died in London they were wont to help the poor 
scholars of the universities with exhibition ; when any 
man died they would bequeath great sums of money 
towards the relief of the poor." 2 

Bishop Latimer's complaint was not, perhaps, 
quite true to the times — but they were true to him, 
smarting under the changes which had come about, 
and being ignorant of the methods which were to 
be introduced to deal with the changes. They were 
true also in another sense. The older forms of pity 
and compassion were essential parts of citizen life. 
Citizens looked internally, considered what London 
would say to their acts or to their neglects. Now 
citizens looked externally, and considered only what 
was due from them as economic units of the nation. 
Pity and compassion do not flow quite so easily or 
so freshly by the new stream, and Latimer had 
found this out. In blaming the citizens of London 

1 Hist. MSS. Com., Salisbury Collection, xi. p. 67. 

2 Latimer's Sermon of the Plough, 1548. 



202 LONDON 

he blamed wrongly, for he was looking back upon 
the old citizenship instead of forward to the new. 

These changed views are well illustrated by the 
events which accompanied the mooring of Drake's 
ship, The Golden Hind, near the Mast Dock at 
Deptford. From a passage in one of Ben Jonson's 
plays it is clear that it became a resort for citizen 
visitors, the cabin being converted into a banqueting- 
house. Paul Hentzner visited it in 1598, and describes 
the event as follows : " Upon taking the air down the 
river the first thing that struck us was the ship of 
that noble Pirate, Sir Francis Drake, in which he is 
said to have circumnavigated this globe of earth." 1 
In later Stuart days it was allowed to wear away, a 
chair made from its wood and resting in the gallery 
of the Bodleian Library, being the last relic of it.' 2 
These are the bare records. But the fact is greater 
than the records. That " noble pirate," Drake, was 
England's hero. His journeys were the expressions 
of England's hopes. His hatred of the Spaniard was 
the political note of the period. His glorious fighting 
against the Armada, expressed in that wonderful 
despatch to Walsyngham, summed up the heroic in 
the highest form of national epic : " With the grace 
of God if we live, I doubt it not but ere it be long so 
to handle the matter with the Duke of Sidonia as he 

1 A Journey into England by Paul Hentzner in the Year MDXCVIII. 
(Strawbery Hill edition), p. 46. 

2 Abraham Cowley's ode "sitting, and drinking in the chair 
made out of the relics of Sir Francis Drake's ship" was printed 
in 1663. (See Appendix VI.) 



DISRUPTION OF COMMERCIALISM 203 

shall wish himself at Saint Marie among his orange 
trees." Cecil recognised here "the first signe of 
victory," as he wrote on 25th July 1588, and Cecil 
interpreted aright. 1 

Deptford is not the only London site dedicated 
to such events as these. There are Wapping, 
Greenwich, Ratcliff, and Woolwich. The great 




Greenwich Palace in the sixteenth century. 

captain, Martin Frobisher, an arctic explorer and a 
commander against the Spanish Armada, sailed 
from Ratcliff. The first English expedition to the 
far north seas was led by Sir Hugh Willoughby 
and Richard Chancellor, starting from Ratcliff in 
1553. This was followed by others. John Davis, 
whose name is commemorated in Davis Strait off 
Greenland, came " into the river of Thames as high 
as Ratcliff in safetie, God be thanked," on 6th 

1 Hist. MSS. Com., xii. (iv.), p. 253. 



204 LONDON 

October 1586. William Adams, who lived in Rat- 
cliff, took the first ship, a Dutch one, to Japan, and 
John Saris, born in Aldgate in 1579, was the first 
to sail an English ship to Japan. Raleigh organised 
his expedition to Cadiz from there in 1596. Tudor 
London indeed is endowed richly in this respect, and 
there is scarcely a river landing-place which has not 
its beginnings in this great period. Woolwich was 
developed as a dockyard both by Henry VIII. and 
Elizabeth. Henry purchased land for new docks for 
building and repairing vessels there, and he launched 
therefrom his ship The Great Harr'y in 1512. 
Elizabeth built her ship The Elizabeth there, and 
launched it in 1559. 

We of this age cannot quite understand the great- 
ness of the change concealed beneath such facts as 
these. They can only be understood by reference to 
their outcome. It is not only that from them arose 
that historic meeting at Old Founders Hall, Lothbury, 
in 1598, when Sir John Lancaster's explorations led 
a few merchant adventurers, with the lord mayor 
at their head, to found the East India Company, 
but that London was being transformed by their 
influence. 

The greatest and most enduring sign, not only of 
the changes, but of the brain-wrought intention to 
bring about such changes, was the development of 
the English drama. That remarkable feature of 
Tudor London was due to the new position London 
was assuming in a new world. Nothing less could 



DISRUPTION OF COMMERCIALISM 205 



have expressed itself so forcibly upon the art sense, 
and that it took the direction of drama was due to 
the feeling of movement in things, a movement as 
strong and as sudden as any of the stirring events 
which produced the Greek drama. The English 
drama, like the Greek, was the product of city civilisa- 
tion. London was the 
city which thus distin- 
guishes itself, and to 
Tudor London the dis- 
tinction is due. 

It is well to pause 
awhile here, for the 
story of the stage and 
its literature in its 
earliest efforts is full of 
interest to Londoners. 
Mrs S topes is our best 
authority for some of 
this, and I quote from 
her the salient facts. 
In 1571 the privy council decreed that all strolling- 
players, who were not "the servants of a noble- 
man," should be dealt with as vagabonds. James 
Burbage, a man of the people, not rich, nor 
university bred, but a joiner by trade, enrolled 
himself among " the servants " of the favourite, Sir 
Robert Dudley. He and his fellow-actors were not 
even then safe, for the lord mayor, on the grounds 
of disturbances from public performances, interfered 




The Swan Theatre, 1616, from 
N. J. Visscher's View. 



206 



LONDON 



much with the freedom of even " the servants of 
noblemen." Then James Burbage asked the Earl 
of Leicester to secure a royal patent for his com- 
pany. This he did on 7th May 1574, and thereby 




The Bear Garden, 1616, from N. J. Visscher's View of London. 

turned the mumming of the vagabond into the 
profession of an artist. The patent was addressed 
to all mayors and all corporations to permit James 
Burbage and his fellows " to use, exercise, and occupy 
the art and faculty of playing comedies, tragedies, 
interludes, and stage plays . . . without any of your 
lets and hindrances ... as you tender our pleasure." 
But London did not tender the Royal pleasure. 



DISRUPTION OF COMMERCIALISM 207 

The lord mayor and the corporation refused to allow 
any players to play without a licence from them, and 
without giving half their profits to the poor. The 
following year it disallowed players altogether in 
the city, and forbade them to play in innyards, or 
open places, in the liberties. James Burbage, while 
necessarily submitting, circumvented their orders by 
building in 1576 in the liberty of Holywell, north of 
Finsbury Fields, an enclosed building for himself out- 
side of the city jurisdiction, and he became "the first 
builder of playhouses " — a pioneer even in the name, 
for he called it "The Theatre." James Burbage had 
secured premises in another " liberty " — rooms belong- 
ing to Sir William More in the disused monastic 
buildings of Blackfriars, which he arranged and fitted 
as a theatre, so that if the worst came to the worst 
at his theatre at Holywell, he would have another 
place whereon to stand. His sons, Cuthbert and 
Richard, pulled down the theatre, taking advantage 
of the order of the corporation for its destruction, so 
as to secure the material, and carried it to Bank Side 
by St Saviour's. There they rebuilt it, a phcenix 
theatre, the finest in the land ; and they called it 
" The Globe." In it Richard, the great expressor, 
translated the ideals of Shakespeare, the great creator, 
till they had moved the city and the court to 
wonder, and made the introduction of the theatre 
one of the glories to be credited to Tudor London. 

Plantagenet London would not have acted thus. 
She would have recognised Shakespeare as she had 



208 



LONDON 



recognised Chaucer, and the birthplace of the English 
drama would have been in the heart of the city in- 
stead of being banished to its unestablished purlieus. 
The whole business is on a petty scale. The Lord 




The Globe Theatre 1616, from N. J. Visscher's View of London. 

Mayor writes to the Lord Chancellor on 12th April 
1550, informing "him that the players of plays used 
at the Theatre and other such places, and tumblers 
and such like, were a very superfluous sort of men." 
Against such an opinion as this even the court was 
powerless. The Lords of the Council urged '"that 
without frequent exercise of such plays as were to be 
presented before Her Majesty, her servants could 




Q £ 

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£ "5 

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DISRUPTION OF COMMERCIALISM 209 

not conveniently satisfy her recreation," and the city 
wrote to the Archbishop of Canterbury informing 
him how " the youths of the city were greatly cor- 
rupted, and their manners infected with many evils 
and ungodly qualities by reason of the wanton and 
profane devices represented on the stage." Later on, 
in 1597, they urged the Lords of the Council to sup- 
press the Theatre, the Curtain, and the Bankside. 1 

One thing will be noted from these facts, namely, 
that London was getting outside its walls. It is only 
one of the signs of an entirely new development which 
began in Tudor times — namely, the expansion of the 
city beyond the ancient lines. We are face to face 
with a new London. The new London is not only 
new institutionally, but it begins to be new in form. 
New problems arising from the expansion arise at 
once, and neither the city nor the state attempted to 
grapple with them. They were left to solve them- 
selves, and have not yet been solved, but they over- 
whelmed London. 

We come upon the problem of expansion quite 
suddenly and quite incidentally. It gathers quickly, 
but it is not dealt with and is only recognised in a 
petty way. Yet it is from this stage onward going 
to be the dominant note in London history. It is 
going to sway statesmen and municipalists. It is 
going to determine the possibilities of London in 
relation to the state. There is a moment when it 

1 See the section devoted to "Plays and Players" in Remem- 
brancia, pp. 350-357. 

14 



210 LONDON 

could have been grappled with, and when that 
moment was allowed to pass without action, perhaps 
purposely allowed to pass, the destiny of London for 
three hundred years was fixed on a low plane, on a 
plane that it has never before occupied. It will 
compel us to write of decadence, to come across 
events which tell of the shame of the city, to see 
once more the old light of city independence flaming 
from the deadness of neglect and then flickering and 
dying out, to close our view with a strong yearning 
for the greatness of the past, but with doubts as to 
the possibility of achievement. The story of the 
expansion of London is heavy with disappointments 
and disillusions, alleviated only by that incurable 
optimism which comes from the glory of the past. 

We must note some facts of this expansion. There 
is no such difficulty as we noted in connection with 
the topography of London in pre-Tudor days. There 
are remains of Tudor buildings, Tudor maps, and 
Tudor literature, all of them glorious expressions of 
the age. The ancient w r alls were necessary to Tudor 
London. In a poem written circa 1576, entitled A 
learning to London by the fall of Antwerp, 1 by Rafe 
Norris, we see by one of the allusions that the walls 
of London were looked upon as important elements 
in the city's safety — 

" Keep sure thy trench, prepare thy shot. 11 
And again — 

" Erect your walles, give out your charge. 11 

3 This is printed by the Percy Society, vol. i. 



"3 
i 

| 

* 






| 

c 


HI 



8 







DISRUPTION OF COMMERCIALISM 211 

Expansion began with palaces -- palaces of the 
sovereign, of the new nobility, of the princes of 
the Church, all deeming it necessary to congregate in 
London at the commencement of its new chapter 
of history as capital city. Henry VIII. seized White- 
hall from Wolsey, and occupied Eltham, as it had 
been occupied since the days of Henry IV. Both 
these buildings still retain fragments of their former 
glory in the present day. Underground Whitehall is 
still Wolsey s Whitehall. The hall at Eltham is still 
an architectural glory of the fourteenth century 
(Appendix VII.). The palaces of the nobility ex- 
tended along the Strand front from the city walls to 
Westminster, the last of them, Northumberland House 
at Charing Cross, having been destroyed in 1874, 1 while 
those of the Church were principally situated in South- 
wark. Remains of Winchester House still exist in the 
municipal fire brigade residence ; remains of Brandon 
House were dug up only a few years ago, and are 
preserved as memorials of Tudor architecture in the 
London museum, while the house itself is pictured 
on Van Wyngaerde's beautiful drawing. The Arch- 
bishop of Canterbury located himself at Lambeth, 
and his lordship of London had been at Fulham since 
Alfred's time. We get into closer touch with this 
expansion by a passage in Stow's Annals, quoted by 
Furnival from Howes's edition of 1631 (p. 1048). 
" There hath beene much encrease of Buildings in 

1 A list of these, with some descriptive notes, is given in Journ. 
British Archaeological Association, 1906, pp. 217-230. 



212 LONDON 

all parts aforesaid, chiefly whereof I now speake, is 
from the West part of Holbourne and Bloomesbury, 
and the parts on that side, and on the other side of 
the way in a place anciently called the Elmes, of 
Elmes that grew there, where Mortimer was ex- 
ecuted, and let hang two dayes and two nights to 
be seene of the people, as you may reade ; which 
place hath now left his name, and is not knowne to 
one man of a Million where that place was ; and from 
thence the New faire buildings called Queenes street 
leading vnto Drury lane ; and then on the other side 
the high way in the great Field, anciently called 
Long Acar, with the South side of the street called 
Couent Garden that leadeth vnto Saint Martins Lane, 
which is newly made a faire streete." 

The note of expansion thus expressed in the 
literature of the day also gave birth to the pro- 
duction of picture maps of London. Wyngaerde, in 
the middle of the sixteenth century, produced the 
earliest view of London which has been preserved to 
modern times. It is a great representation of the 
city, and cameos from it could be taken at several 
points. London Bridge is beautifully pictured, and 
the view of the king's palace of Whitehall is extra- 
ordinarily interesting. Another map of the period is 
printed in the Civitates Oi'bis Terrarum,1572,hy Braun 
and Hogenburg, all the features of which are distinctly 
Elizabethan, especially the buildings westward of 
Temple Bar. The famous map of Ralph Agas has 
been dated from internal evidence by Mr Fairman 



DISRUPTION OF COMMERCIALISM 213 

Ordish at 1561. Charing Cross. Whitehall (called 
" the Courte "), Westminster, St James Park are well 
depicted ; the territory of Lincoln's Inn is enclosed ; 
the residence of the Earl of Southampton, Shake- 
speare's patron, upon " the backe wall " of which, 
" in Chauncerie Lane," whiteblowe or whitelowe grass, 
the English " naile woort," was noted by Gerard 
the Herbalist to grow plentifully, is shown ; the road 
to Theobalds, passing Clerkenwell and the hospital of 
St John of Jerusalem, is plainly marked ; the Strand, 
Temple Bar, and Fleet Street, the river, with its 
many features of interest, and the St Paul's area are 
notable points in this remarkable map. The Norden 
map of 1593 is well known and shows some of the 
most notable parts of the city and Westminster. 1 

London is shown by these facts to have assumed 
outwardly the position of a great European city, and 
that is undoubtedly the true way of estimating Tudor 
London. Neither in literature nor in art have we any 
representations or any suggestions of a similar position 
accorded to Plantagenet London. The distinction is 
a true distinction. Plantagenet London was a great 
London in England ; Tudor London was a great 
London in Europe. This conception is still further 
conveyed by the direction given by Isabella d'Este to 
the Mantuan ambassador at Venice, in 1523, to secure 
representations of the chief cities of Europe in order 

1 Mr Wheately has described this map in Furnival's edition of 
Harrison's Description of England, vol. i. pp. lxxxix-cvi (New Shak- 
spere Soc.). 



214 LONDON 

to adorn her palace. London was one of those cities, 
and the fresco still remains there, blurred and spoiled, 
but still showing London in outline much as Norden 
represented it in 1593. 

This was the Tudor London which was to be 
visited by the foreign traveller, as Paris, Vienna, 
Venice, and Florence, and other cities had hitherto 
been visited. In all the visitings to this country, 
London was ever the foremost glory of England. 
Frederick, Duke of Wirtemberg, came in 1592. On 
the 10th of August, having arrived at Gravesend 
overland from Dover, " a small vessel was ordered 
and we embarked upon the river Thames, which is 
tolerably broad, and in which there are many swans. 
We then sailed towards London. Upon the left- 
hand side of the river we passed the beautiful and 
pleasant royal palace of Greenwich." He went 
straight to London. It is described as a large, 
excellent, and mighty city of business. Most of 
the inhabitants are employed in buying and selling 
merchandise and trading in almost every corner of 
the world ; it is a very populous city, so that one can 
scarcely pass along the streets on account of the 
throng ; the inhabitants are magnificently apparelled, 
and are extremely proud and overbearing, and because 
the greater part of them seldom go into other countries, 
but always remain in their houses in the city attending 
to their business, they care little for foreigners, but 
scoff and laugh at them, and there is a mass of other 
criticism. On the 14th August his Highness and 




XV/Fmyn, 



WHITEHALL, about 1560. 
From Ralph Agas' Map. 



DISRUPTION OF COMMERCIALISM 215 

suite went in wherries (gundeln — gondolas) to the 
beautiful and royal church called Westminster, and 
he went to a stately banquet at the residence of 
Beauvois, the French ambassador, who had a beautiful 
country house distant from London about two English 
miles, that is, at Hackney. He discussed many things, 
and among them the possibility of invasion, when he 
was told that the soldiers were excellent, but they do 
not willingly go on foreign service, and that in case 
of war with an enemy wishing to subdue England 
entirely, the enemy would have to make up his mind 
to fight eight pitched battles and to confront from 
thirty to forty thousand men in each. 1 

Another Prince of Wirtemberg, Lewis Frederick, 
came over in 1610, and was conducted to London from 
Gravesend in the royal barges, and lodged in the inn 
called " The Black Eagle." Among the ceremonies 
the prince took part in was a visit to the resident am- 
bassador of the States of the United Provinces, "who 
lives out of the city opposite Westminster, in a very 
fine house of his own, and with beautiful gardens 
round about : it is called Sudlambet," South Lambeth. 2 

The most interesting of all travelled accounts is, 
of course, that of Paul Hentzner in 1598. His 
account of his reception at Greenwich Palace is well 
known and has been often quoted. It was here, he 
says, Elizabeth the present queen was born, and here 

1 W. B. Rye, England as seen by Foreigners, temp. Elia. and James, 
pp. 1-53. 

2 Ibid., pp. 57-66. 



216 LONDON 

she generally resides, particularly in summer, for the 
delightfulness of its situation. 1 Sources not so well 
known, however, show some aspects of Tudor London 
and its palace on the Thames which were not revealed 
by the traveller from continental Europe. Queen 
Elizabeth loved her Greenwich home in a special 
way, and we have a letter in the Rutland collection, 
dated 2nd June 1583, which describes how " Her 
Majesty cam yesterday to Greenwich from my Lord 
Treasurer's. She was never in any place better pleased, 
and sure the howse, garden, and walks may compare 
with any delicat place in I tally.'" 2 

We cannot doubt that the London of this age — 
Tudor and Stuart London, that is — could bear this 
comparison. The architectural glories coming there- 
from would tell us this, even if nothing else did. 
But if the descriptions by visitors, by travelled 
foreigners, all bear testimony to this aspect of Tudor 
London, there are also fragments more precious 
because they were not written for the public eye. 
One such fragment, a little later in date but in spirit 
belonging to this period, " An English Traveler's 
first curiosity : or the knowledge of his owne countrey 
by Henry Belasyse, 1657," gives us such a glimpse of 
London amidst the wider view he is taking as to stir 
one's imagination. It begins with a description of 
Greenwich, 3 which " is more famous and beautifull for 

1 Hentzner's Journey into England, p. 47. 

- Hist. MSS. Com., xii. (iv), p. 150. 

3 Hist. MSS. Com., Various Collections, ii. pp. 201-202. 




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DISRUPTION OF COMMERCIALISM 217 




218 LONDON 

its situation then for the castle [Windsor] itselfe. 
Here is the best prospect in Europe sayth judicious 
Barckley in his Icon Ammarum, for under the hill 
runneth Themms, and from thence to London is 
loaden with so many tall ships that their verry masts 
looke like an old forest. On boath sides of the river 
are seen pleasant green meadowes like so many 
gardens, and at the end of the prospect a goodly great 
citty, London, shewing its broad sides ; all which 
concurring together make that this castle may most 
deservedly be called the Belvidere of Europe ; neither 
that of St Germains in France, of Frescati in Italy, or 
of Constantinople in Greece comeing neere this pros- 
pect for trew beauty and pleasantness. The chief 
citty of England, and in my opinion the greatest of 
Europe but one, Paris, is London. Theires nothing 
heare but hansome. Hansome inhabitants ; rich 
shopps, tow rare exchanges, noble palaces upon the 
rivers side ; streets both large and long, neat buildings 
and walkes of the Inns of Courts, curious feilds on all 
sides of it, exquisit markets in it well stored with all 
provisions ; the commodity of the river and boates, the 
prodigious bridge, the dew and dayly visit of the ebbing 
and flowing of the sea in the Themms, which, visiting 
London dewly once a day, either bringeth to it, or 
carryeth from it, all merchandise the world can afforde 
it, or it the world. The greatest ships that ride upon 
the sea come and unload in London in the very harte 
of the towne." 

The grandeur that had come to Tudor London did 



— 
'It 







DISRUPTION OF COMMERCIALISM 219 

not wipe out the black spots in it. Bishop Latimer 
could write as follows of the very centre : " I think 
verily that many a man taketh his death in Paul's 
churchyard, and this I speak of experience, for 1 myself, 
when I have been there in some mornings to hear the 
sermons, have felt such an ill-favoured, unwholesome 
savour that I was the worse for it a great while 
after." 1 London was also worse for it in that dismal 
year of the plague which followed surely upon such 
conditions. 

Expansions of the city beyond the walls brought 
very direct results upon London. It began very 
early to affect the government of London, and I 
will quote one or two curious pieces of evidence of 
this. The western suburbs, extending to the Strand 
and to Holborn, began to be occupied by business 
people, who did not have over them the strict 
government of the city. In 1590 an outbreak took 
place, and an assault was made upon Lincoln's Inn, 
for what purpose is not very clear. We find an 
account of this disturbance in a proclamation issued 
by the queen on the 23rd September, in the " thirty- 
second yeere of her raign," and dated from Ely Place. 
This proclamation sets forth particulars which illus- 
trate the entire absence of any properly constituted 
government outside the city. 

" Where the Queenes most excellent maiestie 
being giuen to understand of a very great outrage 

1 Bishop Latimer s Sermons, edited by Dr John Watkins, 1 824, 
vol. ii. p. 282. 



220 LONDON 

lately committed by some apprentices and others, 
being masterlesse men and vagrant persons in and 
about the surburbs of the Citie of London, in assault- 
ing of the house of Lincolnes Inne and the breaking 
and spoyling of diuers chambers in the said house, 
which offences her highnesse is minded to haue to 
be duely examined and thereupon aswel the offenders 
therein, as also such persons of the said house of 
Lincolnes Inne as did by any meanes giue any 
occasion to prouoke the same unlawful outrage, to 
be duely and very seuerely punished according to 
their demerits, hath therefore thought good for the 
better auoyding of such like outrages hereafter, 
straightly to charge and command all such as be 
any householders within the seuerall parishes of S. 
Dunstanes, S. Brides, S. Andrewes in Holborne, S. 
Giles in the Field, S. Martin in the Field, the Strond, 
and S. Clement without the Temple Barre, that they 
and euery of them doe cause all their apprentices, 
journeymen, servants, and family in their seuerall 
houses, other than such as shall be appointed to keepe 
seuerall watches, to tarry and abide within their 
seuerall houses, and not to be suffered to goe abroad 
after nine of the clocke at night upon paine of im- 
prisonment." 

This regulation was to be in force for six days 
only, and one cannot help wondering why such 
a regulation could possibly be allowed. Another 
example comes from the very source of its origin. 
Among the Hatfield papers is a certificate of the 



DISRUPTION OF COMMERCIALISM 221 

under-bailiff of Westminster (13th September 1598), 
"touching the search which was done according to 
Cecil's direction. Such persons as were taken with- 
in the liberty were carried before the Lord Mayor 
and Justices, who punished some, and others had 
certificate to convey them whether they should go. 
Divers the bakers of Westminster much forget them- 
selves in breaking that assize in their bread that is 
held in London. He has no means in the absence 
of the clerk of the market to compel them to observe 
good assize, except it shall please Cecil to give 
warrant for such assize to be kept there as is in 
London, and in default punishment to be inflicted 
according to law." 1 

There can be no question about such instances as 
these. The governance of London was slipping 
away. It could not grasp the problem of expansion 
when it began under the Tudors. A half measure 
was attempted in 1636 by incorporating "divers 
places in the city and suburbs, and three miles 
compass of the same," and taking into their body 
" as well Freemen of London, as others of the King's 
subjects using any art, occupation or mystery or 
trade by retail, inhabiting within their precincts, 
except weavers, brickmakers, and tilemakers, who 
were reserved till further order should be given 
for their admittance." 2 This was done by order in 
council against the objections of the city that it 

1 Hist. MSS. Com. {Hatfield, viii.), p. 344. 

2 Remembrancia, pp. 227-229. 



222 LONDON 

" would be very prejudicial to the liberties and 
privileges of the city," and these self-same objections 
of the city remain to this day. 

Perhaps these difficulties are the natural following 
from others, but there was a definite divergence from 
the ancient ideas of civic government in 1580. 
Edward VI., boy king that he was, lived long enough 
to show that he aimed at setting right some of the 
evils which flowed from the revolutionary doings of 
his father. Among his most signal acts towards this 
purpose is his gift of his palace of Bridewell — " a 
f aire purchased place called Bridewell " l — in the 
city to the poor of London. Fortunately, there has 
been preserved the scheme for the management of 
this institution, and an examination reveals two 
important facts : first, the remarkable character of 
the provisions themselves ; secondly, their entire in- 
dependence of city government. The scheme was 
issued in 1580, and I must quote certain of its more 
important clauses. 

The title of the document is " Orders appointed 
to be executed in the Cittie of London, for setting 
roges and idle persons to worke, and for releefe of 
the poore." The clauses which I must quote are as 
follows : — 

"1. For releefe of the poore, and for setting to 
worke of vagaraunt people, there are to be set up 
in Bridewell certaine artes, occupations, workes, and 
labours." 

1 Tell-Trothes Netv Yeares Gift, 1593 (New Shakspere Soc), p. 22. 



DISRUPTION OF COMMERCIALISM 223 

" 2. There are to be provided stocke & tooles for 
those workes. There is to be provided bedding, 
apparrell, and dyet for those poore to be set to 
worke." 




King Edward VI. presenting the Charters of the Bridewell, Bethlem hospitals. 

" 4. Within convenient time after the day limitted 
by such Proclamation a generall search shalbe made, 
and lykewise new generall searches from time to 
time as shalbe requisite, throughout the Cittie and 
the liberties therof at one instant, & all the vagarants 
that shalbe there founde shalbe brought to Bridewell 
to be examined." 



224 LONDON 

" 8. Those whom the Cittie by Law is charged to 
provide for and are able to work, shalbe received into 
Bridewell, and there kept with thin diet, onely suffic- 
ing to sustaine them in health, and shalbe set to 
work in such of the workes, labours, and occupations 
as they shall be found fittest for." 

" 25. By the Inquest shalbe there enquired, if 
[there be any] idle persons, roges, vagabunds, and 
other suspect persons which lyve disorderly or 
suspiciously or spend their times at Bowling allies, 
playes, and other places unthriftily : & whether the 
meane officers doo their dueties, and all other 
matters, as in the charge of leetes : and that speedy 
processe be used according to the law for the re- 
formation without delay." 

" 28. In every parrish a general survey to be 
made, by the Constable, Churchwardens, Collectors 
for the poore, and vi. other of the Parishners of all 
their poore and needy e neighbors of the Parish, viz. 
of every house particularly, the names of the dwellers, 
the children and servauntes, the sexe and age of 
every one, and which be able to labour and where- 
upon, and who be utterly impotent to any labour." 

" 41. Of such companies of this City as wel the 
worshipfull as the inferior as the governors of Bride- 
wel shall find to be requisite according to the qualitie 
of the artes or labors that are to be overseene, there 
shalbe appointed persons to attend, so as there may 
be every day two attending at Bridewell to oversee 
the workes, and to give knowledge of the defaults 



DISRUPTION OF COMMERCIALISM 225 

which they shal find, to the governours, on paine of 
xx. shillings to be payed to the wardens if they 
appoynt not, being therunto required by the space 
of a weeke before, & on paines of vi. shillings viii. 
pence to be paid by every of the parties appointed, 
if he attend not being warned three daies before 
at the least, the sayd paines to be to the use 
of the poore in Bridewell and to be levied by 
distresse." 

" 42. Where in the Savoy are lodged nightly great 
numbers of idle wicked persons, cutpurses, cousiners, 
and such other theeves, & there in the night are 
hidden from officers and in the day do use their 
rogish life, so that the same place honorably ordeined 
is by such abuse made a noursery of roges, theeves, 
idle and dronken persons : for remedy therof, request 
to be made to the maister of that house, that speciall 
persons be appoynted to examine such as shall come 
to lodge in the Savoy that such be lodged there as 
be of honest fame, poore men comming up for their 
sutes or causes, or such as are knowen & can gyve 
accompt of their labour in the day time, and no 
other : & if any such lewde roges be founde there, 
the officers of the Savoy or the Justices to whom it 
may appertaine may send them to such place as they 
ought to be sent by lawe." 

" 49 Artes, Occupations, Labors, and 

Works to be set up in Bridewell. 

" The worke in the Milles ; the worke in the Lighter 

& unlading of Sand ; the carying of sand ; making 

15 



226 LONDON 

of shoes ; thicking of Cappes by hand and foote ; 
knitting of hose ; spinning of Linnen yarne ; spinning 
of Candell weeke ; making of Packthreed ; drawing 
of wier ; making of woll Gardes ; making of Nayles ; 
making of gloves ; making of Combes ; making of 
Inkle and tape ; making of silke Lace ; making of 
Aparrell for the house ; spinning of wollen yrne ; 
making of Pinnes ; making of Pointes ; making of 
Knives ; making of Tennise-balles ; making of Bayes ; 
making of Feltes ; picking of woll for Felts ; or any 
other that may fall in practise." 

•'51. To avoid the perill that the setting a worke 
of vagrants in the said Artes at Bridewell might be 
to the overthrow of the worke and to the undoing of 
poore cittizens housholders, and their families that 
live by working in the same arts for other, or by 
retaling of things wTought : Therfore the governours 
of Bridwell shall consult with the Wardens and 
discrete men of those companies that use the work- 
ing or selling of such things as shalbe wrought 
in Bridewel, as shoomakers and other, that the 
said companies and their housholders shal deliver 
their worke to such number in Bridwel as they 
may with the benefit of their company, and shall 
pay for the same at reasonable rates to their 
profit." 

" 54. For the better releefe of the poore, the 
leather that shalbe founde faulty in this Citty and 
seised as forfayted, shall never for any price come 
to the use of the searchers, or sealers of leather, but 



DISRUPTION OF COMMERCIALISM 227 

shall wholy be to Christes hospital, and Bridewell, 
to be there made into shooes for the poore, by 
the poore that shall worke there : and the searchers 
shall have their portion in money according to the 
praisement." 

" 55. Provision is to be made for apparell, bedding, 
and meate for the sayd poore, for tooles, and for 
stocke and stuffe for the occupations, for making of 
Milles, and buying of Lighters, for fees and wages 
of Bedelles and other necessary poore attendauntes : 
and therfore a competent & sufficient portion of 
money is to be had, which by an estimate for one 
yeere accompting for ii, c. [200] persons amounteth 
about ii, m, 1. [£2000]." 

" 66. That the preachers be moved at the sermons 
at the Crosse & other convenient times, specially in 
the terme time, & that other good notorious meanes 
be used, to require both Citizens, Artificers, and 
other, and also all farmers and other for husbandry, 
and gentlemen and other for their kitchins & other 
services, to take servants and children both out of 
Bridewell and Christs Hospitall at their pleasures, 
with declaration what a charitable deed it shalbe not 
onely for the releefe of those whom they shall so take 
into service, but also of multitudes of other that shall 
from time to time be taken into the hospitals in their 
places, and so be preserved from perishing, with offer 
also that they shall have them conveniently apparelled 
& bound with them for any competent number of 
yeeres, with further declaration that many of them 



228 LONDON 

be of toward quallities in readyng, wryting, Grammer, 
and Musike." x 

These provisions show the changes which the 
destruction of the monasteries had brought about, as 
well as the methods adopted to meet the distress 
caused by the changes. They are far-reaching and 
representative of the new order of things, while their 
practical value, even from the point of view of modern 
industrial requirements, is self-evident. The economic 
necessities are met by wise provisions (51), and there 
is an evident endeavour to meet the great necessity 
by a careful study of the situation likely to be pro- 
duced by this new measure of state control over the 
labour of the very poor. Incidentally, we have a 
somewhat lurid picture of the lower life of Tudor 
London. 

The king who was doing this for London was doing 
a great thing in a great manner, but the manner 
of doing it reveals an encroachment upon the city 
organisation. The mayor is represented in a con- 
temporary picture as receiving the royal charter, 2 but 
neither mayor nor council has any part in the 
control of this new plan of meeting the needs of 
the poor in London. The gilds in their new form 
of companies have certain practical duties to per- 

1 This is printed from a fuller transcript contributed to the 
Antiquary, vol. xiii. pp. 143-146, by Dr Charles Gross. 

2 Ante, p. 223. " A picture of Edward VI. delivering to the Lord 
Mayor of London his royal charter whereby he gave up his royal 
palace of Bridewell to be converted into an hospital and workhouse " 
was "in the great hall at Bridewell " ; Archceolo°ia, vol. iii. p. 190. 



DISRUPTION OF COMMERCIALISM 229 

form, but the city has no constitutional powers, and 
in its place appear the smaller units of the parish. 
Whether the parish was fixed upon as representative 
of the religious authorities that had been swept away 
is not quite clear, but even then the entire ignoring 
of the city authority betokens a change which is only 
at the beginning of changes now rapidly to take 
place. Whether the change was deliberate and 
determined it is impossible to say, but on the whole 
it seems to flow from the new condition of things 
quite naturally, and looks as if the bringing in of the 
parish into the local government of the city, contra 
the old city form of government, was the result not 
the cause of the changes which had eaten into Tudor 
London. The new policy spread deeply into the 
country under the great poor law act of Elizabeth, 
and the country has not yet recovered from the 
fissure in its institutional system which it produced, 
and which all later legislation has increased. 

The events themselves bring us into close touch 
with government by proclamation, or even by the 
direction of the chief minister of the crown, and this 
is not government, but a merely hopeless system of 
non-government. How hopeless may be gathered 
from a letter from the Lord Mayor to the Lord 
Treasurer, in which it was necessary to explain that 
" the Mayor of the city for the time being and the 
Aldermen who had passed the chair, with the 
Recorder, were Justices of the Peace for the county 
of the city of London and the suburbs thereof in as 



230 LONDON 

ample a manner as any other Justices of Peace in 
other counties of the realm," and to urge that " the 
houses in the heart of the city, being daily filled with 
a great multitude of people of the meaner sort," were 
under the authority of the city, and that " it would 
greatly prejudice the citizens if they should be 
delivered from their authority." 1 The London with 
which we have been in touch during the centuries 
over which we have travelled is not this London — the 
London of new and unconnected systems of govern- 
ment, the London expanding into an area which is 
devoid of government, the London which has to ex- 
plain itself. It leaves Tudor London with a blot 
upon its escutcheon — a great and growing London, 
no doubt, but a London which was beginning not to 
know or understand itself. 

Despite its greatness, despite the greatness of Tudor 
thought and action, we have therefore to leave this 
chapter of London history with a despondent note. 
London was getting out of hand. Expansion was its 
dominant feature, but it was unregulated expansion. 
We are landed into commercialism with the old 
communal regulated life of the city left far behind, 
never again to assume a prominent position, but with 
patches of it here and there in survival, serving only 
the purpose of hiding up the real change that had 
come. Tudor London was modern London to all 
intents and purposes. We realise this in all sorts of 
ways — from the plays which depict life there, still 

1 Remembrancia, p. 43. 



DISRUPTION OF COMMERCIALISM 231 

better from the incidental glimpses of its citizen life 
which arise in contemporary correspondence and 
memoirs. The reading is not pleasant, and one feels 
it is exaggerated. But some facts cannot be exag- 
gerated. Gallant lords, as we have seen, might tell 
foreign princes of the forces that would meet an 
invader, but Londoners would bet against the chances 
of invasion, as they do now, not because they felt they 
could tackle the emergency when it arose, but because 
of their indifference to the issue. How intensely 
modern, for instance, how, indeed, anti-Plantagenet. 
is its habit of betting upon the most serious subjects, 
its habit of thinking its commercial success to be a 
sort of protection against all evil. An example occurs 
in 1590, when a letter, 25th March, addressed to the 
Archbishop of Canterbury by Sir Thomas Tresame, 
has the following passage : " Though your lordships 
who have certain intelligence from foreign parts do 
assuredly know of a mighty preparation of forces in 
Spain to attempt the speedy invading of this realm, 
yet there are very many Protestants that will not in 
any sort believe it ; that wagers will be laid five to 
one, ten to one, yea, twenty to one, that no invasion 
will be here attempted this year." 1 We here get 
Tudor London in right perspective. It is the casual 
observer's point of view, more telling on that account 
than the poet, the satirist, or the pamphleteer, who 
concentrate attention upon exaggerations and leave 
the ordinary alone. 

1 Hist. MSS. Com., Various Collections, iii. p. 56 (Tresham Papers). 



232 LONDON 

London is broken in half by the Tudor changes — 
the earlier half becoming more and more distant and 
in the mist. The fact is, we cannot altogether trust 
Tudor London. The break with the past was inevit- 
able and was politic. But London proceeded on its 
way with no hold on the future. It dwindled into 
Stuart London, when it might have commanded 
Stuart London, commanded it as effectually as 
English London commanded the change into Norman 
London. It had great moments, but no real con- 
tinuity from and to great moments, and that we can- 
not discriminate between Tudor and Stuart London 
shows how great has been the change. Nothing 
seems to come from Tudor London. There is no 
inheritance from it, and Stuart and Georgian London 
stumble upon their tasks unaided. I have said it 
was difficult to carry the lines of continuity across 
the great chasm separating Tudor and Plantagenet 
London, and I have almost proved that it is an 
impossibility. The paradox must stand. 



CHAPTER IX 

DECADENCE 

It is not pleasant to see the title of this chapter and 
to know that it is justified. London suffered, as all 
the country suffered, at the hands of the Stuarts, 
though there is not wanting evidence that in the 
struggle it once or twice lifted its head above the 
sordid concepts of the period and was in the eyes of 
the governing powers something of the same sort of 
city as Plantagenet sovereigns had had to deal with. 

The evidence for this is somewhat remarkable. 
It relates to the old form of relationship between cit}^ 
and sovereignty, and is contained either in a very 
strangely accidental use of expressions which formerly 
were constitutional formulas or in a resuscitation of 
these formulae under the stress of circumstances which 
certainly were calculated to call them forth if they 
were there to be called forth. 

We must go back a little towards Tudor times to 
understand how Stuart events exemplify continuity 
in relationship to the sovereignty. Tudor monarchs 
were great and masterful men and women. Stuart 
monarchs were wrong-headed and, for the most part, 
wrong-hearted. The Tudors never so twisted events 

233 



234 LONDON 

as to bring .about a conscious upsetting of inner work- 
ings. The Stuarts were constantly doing it, and their 
whole attitude to the cities and boroughs affords evi- 
dence of this, both in thought and action. The Stuarts 
were, in fact, bad copies of the Tudors, with just 
enough genius to comprehend the Tudor greatness, 
but with not enough character to profit by the com- 
prehension. It is in this detrimental way that Stuart 
events come to us as continuations of Tudor ideals. 
Even Stuart events, however, illustrate, if fitfully, the 
older conditions. We cannot get at the very heart 
of the events, but on the surface there is enough to 
indicate what London was feeling, even if it could 
not always be up and doing. A single act will illus- 
trate this as well as a dozen parallels to it, and I 
shall be able to quote some documents which will tell 
us more of the real Stuart London than even the 
record of definite acts. 

They consist of letters and notes devoted to the 
feelings and wishes of those who take part in the 
public life, glimpses therefore of the real issues and 
the underlying foundation of events. From this 
source we shall be able to restore some links in the 
chain of continuity which has appeared almost to be 
broken under the influence of Tudor events. 

Once more, by the aid of such important sources 
of information, we shall turn to the relationship of 
city and state as the principal element in the history 
of London. The state now, it will be remembered, 
has changed, and its principal representative, the 



DECADENCE 235 

personal sovereignty, has changed. It is now to 
change once more, thanks to the perverseness of 
Charles I. The House of Commons is now to enter 
into the sovereign power, claiming rights and privi- 
leges which the Stuart mind could not grasp, and 
the struggle for these rights and privileges includes 
events of supreme importance to the position of 
London as a city institution. 

In 1642 the city was in truth seething with trouble, 
and this was set forth in a tract entitled St Hillaries 
Tears, published in that year. It gives us the follow- 
ing glimpses at the internal condition of the capital : 
" All along the Strand (lodgings being empty) you 
shall finde the house-keepers generally projecting 
where to borrow and what to pawne, towards pay- 
ments of their quarter's rents. ... I must follow the 
steps of many an old letcherous citizen, and walke 
into London, where at the Exchange the only question 
that is ask't is, what newes ? from Yorke, Ireland, and 
the Parliament. . . . From hence I travell to Guild- 
hall, where I finde the Lawyers complaining of 
infinite numbers of Banckerouts. . . . Then at the 
halls of every severall company, where in former 
times all the elements could scarce afford variety to 
please the ingenuous gluttony of one single feast, 
now you shall heare the meaner sort of tradesmen 
cursing those devouring foxes, the masters and 
wardens, for the infinite charge their insatiate 
stomackes do put them to ; from hence goe to their 
particular shops, where there is nothing amongst the 



236 



LONDON 



tradesmen but condoling the want of the courtiers' 
money." 

It was the year when London decided to stand out 
against the tyranny of the king and to look up to 
Parliament in a new fashion. The pamphleteer turns 
attention to the petty aspects of the new situation, 
and his observations help us to realise the conditions 




London and Southwark from Whitehall about 1650. 

then prevailing. But they must be read by the light 
of other and more serious conditions if we want to 
get at the complete story. It is not only what the 
individual citizen was thinking and doing, but what 
the corporate citizenship was doing. This was decisive 
and clear, and there exists a most admirable descrip- 
tion in a private letter in Lord Montagu of Beaulieu's 
collection of manuscripts in connection with the 
arrest of the five members by King Charles I. The 
letter is dated 7th January 1642, and refers to events 




X 

u 

DC 

D 
X 
U 






DECADENCE 237 

which took place on 4th January. I quote only the 
portions affecting the city. 

" The Commons voted that they conceived that 
there was need that the city be put in a defensive pos- 
ture, and thereupon the Common Council voted it, and 
sent order for preparation through the city, and chose 
a committee to consider of further defence, and re- 
solved upon another Common Council on Wednesday. 
Wednesday they met in Guildhall, and there being 
awhile set, the King came and divers of his lords, and 
there to the Common Council made a speech, to the 
purpose that he went in the way of arms to the 
Commons' House the day before for fear of the 
multitude, who had not been there of five days before, 
and said further that he would have the six men, but 
they should have fair trial, let them have a fair charge 
first. Then he said he would throw down popery 
(witness the Jesuits that are condemned and reprieved), 
and lastly, he would have the government as formerly 
in the Church, for the better suppressing Brownists 
and Separatists, and that he would not endure them. 
Then he went to Alderman Garett's, the now Sheriff, 
to dinner, and when he went back, the Lord Mayor 
came to wait upon his Majesty, and after the King 
was gone, the citizens' wivws fell upon the Lord 
Mayor, and pulled his chain from his neck, and 
called him traitor to the city, and to the liberties of 
it, and had like to have torn both him and the 
Recorder in pieces. The Common Council resolved 
upon a petition to the King, in which they fly high 



238 LONDON 

as to the breach of privilege of Parliament. The 
Commons adjourned to Guildhall to Tuesday next, 
and there, as a committee, intend to draw up a charge 
against such as have broke privilege of Parliament, 
and if the Attorney- General look not to it, I believe 
he will 'truss.' They will not spare the Queen, and 
more, they will resolve to conclude of a guard, and if 
not granted they will spare no more, but to their 
defence, and all contrive so as that the Kingdom may 
be preserved, and mind no more the way formerly 
gone in. The King had the worst day in London 
yesterday that ever he had, the people crying 
' privilege of Parliament ' [by] thousands, and prayed 
God to turn the heart of the King, shutting up all 
their shops, and standing at their doors with swords 
and halberds." 1 

This is a story which might be envied by even 
Plantagenet London. London stood for the nation, 
not for the Stuart conception of the kingship. It 
had not in the past had to deal with a king divinely 
ordained. It was not going to recognise the new- 
founded idea even under the fascination of the Stuart 
charm of princely bearing. There existed a London 
tradition older by far than the newly evolved divinity 
of kingship, and that this tradition lay at the back of 
the significant action just described is almost certain. 

The Commons meeting in the Guildhall as a Com- 
mittee is the central fact of these events. West- 

1 Hist. MSS, Com., manuscripts of Lord Montagu of Beaulieu, 
p. 141. 



DECADENCE 



239 



minster had been its home, was indeed built for its 
home at the time when London was deemed to be 
too powerful in her independence to be trusted with 
so great an arm of the state. For protection against 
the encroachment of the personal sovereign the 
Commons now gladly turned to the city. We learn 
something of the character of the association thus set 




Lambeth and Whitehall about 1650. 

up from a letter of 1641-2. In that year the House 
of Commons sat in the Guildhall, and it declared that 
" unless the King will afford them a guard of their 
own choice under the command and direction of the 
Earl of Essex their intention is to adjourn themselves 
thither totally." * The city and the state are seen here 
in the closest relationship, and we shall have occasion 
later on to compare this position with another position 
when the House of Commons had definitely won its 
way into the sovereignty of the nation. 

1 Hist. MSS. Com., xii. (ii.), p. 302. 



240 LONDON 

Interwedged in Stuart London is Commonwealth 
London — a London which is marked by at least one 
significant act belonging to the evolution of London 
from a great city of the past. This act has already 
been located. It shows London in arms — not a 
maddened city gathering up its weapons to meet a 
sudden emergency only to lay them down when it 
had been cowed into obedience, but a city organised 
for war as it was organised for peace, the organisation 
for both purposes being separate parts of one city 
system. This point must not be lost sight of. 
London was once again a city in arms as well as a 
city in peace. The men who guided it in peace were 
the same men as those who led it in war. The men 
who stood to arms were the citizens, not the riff-raff 
of the city, not the hired soldiers of the city. The 
whole spectacle is mediaeval, not of the Common- 
wealth ; it is mediaeval as a descendant from the 
London of Anglo-Saxon times ; it is Anglo-Saxon 
because it came from the Roman Londinium. Mr 
Sharpe describes the situation from the city archives. 
Each alderman was directed " to see that the train 
bands, 6000 strong, were fully equipt without the 
necessity of borrowing arms from the city halls or 
elsewhere ; a double watch with halberds and muskets 
was ordered to be kept in each ward by night and 
day, and members of the Common Council were 
forbidden to leave their wards without permission." 1 
Nothing could be more precise. Aldermen and 

1 Sharpe, London and the Kingdom, vol. ii. p. 159. 



DECADENCE 241 

common councillors were, on the emergency, citizens 
in arms. And so, when the Londoners, in 1643, 
marched out as an armed city to defend themselves 
and their institutions on the field of Newbury, they 
were doing precisely what their predecessors under 
Ansgar the Sheriff had done at Hastings, and what 
still earlier predecessors had done at Cray ford. 
There is no act in all London history so significant 
of continuity as this great act of Commonwealth 
London. It is historical in the deepest sense of the 
word history. 1 

That the continuity has been very nearly broken 
does not alter this position. The facts of the 
Commonwealth have to be measured by the facts 
of the nearest precedent, and this is found in the 
array of the city at Mile End under Henry VIII., 
which has been already described. Here it is the 
city in its military form, and nothing but the city. 
Under the Commonwealth it was not only the city — 
it was the city with additions. The additions are, 
of course, due to the purely military considerations 
which the generals of the Commonwealth army 
demanded. The city in its military aspect, even in 
its partial military aspect, was due to historical 
precedent. When it mustered in Finsbury field in 
September 1643, the regiments were not assemblies 
of the wards, but units of Essex's great army. They 
were, however, captained by merchants or large 
shopkeepers, citizens of London. Outside London 

1 See Sharpe, London and the Kingdom, vol. ii. p. 195. 

16 



242 LONDON 

there is nothing of this kind. The Puritan gentry 
captained the Puritan army. London, however, was 
led to the field and fought there on the old principle 
— the men who led the citizens in constitutional 
matters in times of peace led them also in times of 
struggle. The break in the actual line of continued 
action from the Henry VIII. precedent shows up in 
stronger form the strength of the city position as a 
city in arms under the Commonwealth, and the 
whole incident finds its place easily in the series of 
events which belong to the unity of London through 
the ages. 

Not even in these tumultuous proceedings did 
London assume the position of a revolutionary city. 
She acted constitutionally during a revolutionary 
period, but, unlike Paris, she did not head the revolu- 
tion nor drive it to a maddened excess. She stood 
by to see the supreme act carried through, not within 
her own walls but on the ancient government site 
at Westminster. Her citizens no doubt formed up 
outside the phalanx of Ironsides to help in the great 
act. They witnessed the pitiful and heroic figure 
walking with dignity through the royal park from 
his royal palace at St James to his royal palace at 
Whitehall, there to meet his doom. A man, an 
artist, a soldier, a king, a king divinely appointed to 
govern, walked there on his way to meet the God 
whom he worshipped. And England had decided to 
deal with him as it had dealt with his grandmother — 
two Stuarts given this deadly lesson of the liberty of 



DECADENCE 243 

English folk, and yet they could not learn it. The 
occasion was great, the acts were great, and London 
endorsed what was being done by the leaders of 
English policy. But her part was not that of the 
revolutionist city, and here, if anywhere, she would 
have assumed such a part. It was the greatness of 
her historical and traditional position which helped 
her in this crisis as in all others. 

We turn to other phases of the same question 
arising out of later events. Under the Common- 
wealth the city and the Commons House of Parlia- 
ment had very close connections, not always of a 
friendly nature, and at almost every point we find 
city institutions being put to their traditional use, 1 
and the Common Hall once more claimed by the 
citizens as the right place to discuss the situation. 
Under James II., ablest and most wrong-headed 
of the Stuart kings, we have yet another aspect of 
the same question. He understood the position of 
London well enough, and that his understanding 
extended to its ancient relationship to the sovereign 
power is remarkably evident from his own letters. 
When he was Duke of York, and in Edinburgh, 
he writes on 11th December 1679 to his confidant, 
Colonel Legge : " You see all things are running on 
to a commonwealth, and if care be not taken, the 
Citty will be irrecoverably lost and his Majesty 

1 Mr Sharpe relates the events of this period with great clearness 
from the Journals of the House of Lords and of the House of 
Commons, London and the Kingdom, vol. ii. pp. 281-288. 



244 LONDON 

authority brought so very low as not to be re- 
covered." And again on Christmas Day following : 
"If great care be not taken of the Citty, there may 
be great danger from thence, for I know some go 
about to perswade the Citty to sett up a republike, 
flattring them that then they will and ought to 
gouerne the whole nation." 1 Here is the old point 
once more repeated. It is only now in the fears of 
the Court and in the mind of a prince, heir to the 
throne. There was perhaps no real force in it, but 
the point for us to note is the preservation of the 
ancient city tradition, which I think is contained 
in such a record as this. The prince's fears were 
founded on the city's record of its views. 

Confirmation of this view is found in a more direct 
note, arising out of an incident which occurred two 
years later. It relates to an " affaire which was 
brought before the Common Council yesterday [20th 
June 1681], that with some difficulty were brought 
to submitt to the King's conditions. Some debates 
happened which were not expected, and 'tis said the 
persons making them were corrupted, or at least 
withdrawne from their owne principles. But in the 
conclusion the difference was 104 to 86, besides the 
Aldermen in the Pole. So that now 'tis concluded that 
the King of England is likewise King of London." 2 
This remarkable allusion to the ancient conception 
of a king of London may be the merest accident, but 

1 Hist. MSS. Com., xi. (v.) pp. 40, 42. 

2 Ibid., xii. (v.) p. 55. 



DECADENCE 245 

I would suggest that it may also have emanated from 
the debate in the Common Council. These sort of 
things are almost formulae ; they cannot be said by 
the Londoners of the twelfth century, and repeated 
by those of the seventeenth century, unless the 
common expression is founded upon the common 
idea. London remembered her ancient lordship, and 
that it should burst forth amidst the disturbing facts 
of later ages cannot be surprising to those who have 
followed the evidence for such a possibility in these 
pages. The point is, of course, not clear. We have 
not got a report of that debate in the Common Council, 
but with " ancient custom " ringing in our ears 
throughout the ages, with continuity not quite dying 
out even in Tudor and Stuart times, with obstinate 
resistance to the king's conditions only to be over- 
come by corruption, with principles definitely aban- 
doned as the price of corruption, there is enough 
in this singular revival of the old expression to suggest 
that it is a revival also of the old formula, and all that 
the formula included. The citizens who had taught 
even Plantagenet kings to fear the community of 
London, and who had resisted John with the cry that 
they would have no king but their mayor, had done 
so in obedience to rules which had continued from 
previous days. The citizens who held out against 
James — eighty-six of them — equally well understood 
the historic position of London. There is the same 
combination of factors in both cases — fear of the 
city's power, reference to the kingship of London — 



246 LONDON 

and the combination shows what perhaps either one 
of the single factors could not show, namely, that 
the city is once more expressing itself in terms of its 
traditional position. 

This is the last time we shall hear, even in 
formula, of the King of London. It is in truth the 
last time when the title would have been appropriate. 
The kingship was thereafter to give way to a new 
form of sovereignty in which the Commons House of 
Parliament was the dominant power, and it is part 
of the argument for the traditional origin of this 
famous expression when James II. was king that the 
city acted towards Parliament in these later days in 
precisely the same spirit as they had acted towards 
the king. We have already noted one phase of the 
altered position of the House of Commons in the 
sovereignty of the realm in its relation to London. 
In due course we shall have to deal with another 
phase, when city and Commons are again in close 
touch, though not friendliwise. The position in all 
the phases of Stuart London is extraordinarily inter- 
esting. It carries on the continuity of events under 
new conditions, but with the old formulas. It is, 
moreover, not the last link in the chain of continuity. 
It hands on the London position to yet another stage. 
As a connecting link instead of an ending to the long 
chain the Stuart evidence gains added weight, and does 
not allow of the criticism that it is the product only 
of unique circumstances and does not stand in relation- 
ship to previous and after events. It strengthens 



DECADENCE 247 

the claim of the James II. formula to take its 
place in the series which has been brought down 
from the earliest times before historical record had 
begun. 

We follow up this point by another of very con- 
siderable importance. A great and drastic change 
was determined upon, probably as a result of the 
king's insight into the position of the city. The 
change came gradually, however surely, and it has 
to be noted from documents selected from a vast 
mass of material. One such document refers to events 
in 1682. On 30th October Sir William Richard, "a 
brave Tory," was sworn Lord Mayor of London at 
Westminster. " The king did not dine in the city, the 
Commons having refused to contribute to his enter- 
tainment as was usual, laying all the charge on the 
Lord Mayor. They begin to lay their actions already 
on the last Lord Mayor, but the king as a signal 
of his good service has promised to make him a 
baron." 1 This is, of course, only a signal of what 
was to come. Fortunately when it came we have 
a note of the debate in the Common Council, one of 
those glimpses of reality which would have been 
priceless in the case just dealt with. A letter dated 
4th October 1683 from Whitehall relates that "on 
Tuesday there was a Common Council in the city, 
which sat very late, and the question of surrendering 
up their charter being put, it was carried in the 
negative by near eighty voices ; this was matter of 
1 Hist. MSS. Com., Egmont MSS., ii. 120. 



248 LONDON 

great triumph to the Whigs, who upon this occasion 
shewed themselves in as great numbers and as in- 
solent as they have done any time these three years, 
and to add to their insolence would have had Sir 
James Edwards and some of the King's best friends 
to carry up the result of the Common Council to 
His Majesty, but that those gentlemen had courage 
and loyalty enough to refuse them." The city, 
however, did not gain its end. The letter goes on to 
say, "Next morning, that is yesterday, His Majesty 
ordered Mr Attorney General to enter up the 
judgment which was given last term against the 
charter, which was done accordingly, and this day 
His Majesty in Council was pleased to cause the 
same Lord Mayor to be new sworn, with the title 
by commission, as also the two Sheriffs and a new 
Recorder. The city is now to be governed by the 
Lord Mayor, two sheriffs, recorder, and such Justices 
of the Peace as my Lord Keeper shall think fit." 1 
There was a gleeful chuckling amongst the courtiers 
at Whitehall at this destruction of the city govern- 
ment. One of them, Sir L. Jenkins, writing to 
Lord Dartmouth on 8th October in that year, says : 
" I hope when you come home you will find his 
Majesty in so much the more ease and repose that 
his great city is governed by his own commissions. 
Sir William Pritchard acts, indeed, as Lord Mayor, but 
it is by the King's commission, which he received in 
the council, and took his oath of Mayor there on 
1 Hist. MSS. Com., vii. p. 366. 



DECADENCE 249 

Thursday last. The sheriffs elect (Daniel and Dash- 
wood) act as other sheriffs in the counties by com- 
mission. Mr Genner is recorder by commission, the 
18 honest aldermen have commissions to be justices 
of the peace, and now (as I am writing) they are 
sitting very gravely at the Quarter Sessions at 
the Old Bailey instead of the 8 whigs that make 
up the 26 aldermen. There are 8 commoners (such 
as Buckwith, Newland, Bathurst) chosen by the King 
to be over the vacant wards." 1 The city was thus 
placed entirely in the king's hands. Even the 
privilege of being a Livery Company was suspended 
and determined, and not till 1685 were the Companies 
granted liveries de novo, with a provision in the 
charters that His Majesty may by order in Council 
from time to time displace or remove the masters, 
wardens, and assistants of the several companies. 2 
We know the beginning of the shameful story as it 
is told by John Evelyn — the seizure of the charter 
by the king, and its regrant to the city, when both 
king and city played the sorriest parts in the great 
drama of London history. 3 We gather the disastrous 
results from another source. In 1688 the gathering 
storm against the king produced a late repentance. 
In October of that fateful year the king, " at the 
Council or Cabinet Council, told the old aldermen 
that he would restore the charter of London, for 

1 Hist. MSS. Com., xi. (v.) p. 95. 

2 Hist. MSS. Com. (House of Lords MSS.), xii. (vi.) pp. 292-293. 

3 I have related this in my Making of London, p. 208. 



250 LONDON 

which the bells rang that night and bonfires were 
made here, and having this day (4 Oct.) sent my 
Lord Chancellor to the Guildhall with an instrument 
under the broad seal by virtue of which he dissolved 
the present government of the city and turned out 
the Lord Mayor, Sir John Eyles, and all the new 
aldermen, when my Lord called on Sir William 
Pritchard to be Lord Mayor and all the old aldermen 
to take their places. Sir William Pritchard, after six 
hours disputing the matter, absolutely refused to be 
Lord Mayor. As my lord Chancellor came into the 
city he was huzza'd in the streets as his coaches came 
along and in the Guildhall, all which I saw, and it is 
not hard to guess what a strange alteration this has 
made, there being now no Lord Mayor nor aldermen." * 
There is nothing more disastrous to London in all her 
records than this. 

Everything institutional, however, had not slipped 
away from London. There are instances of con- 
tinuity of custom, on the ceremonial side, which 
tell for better things than this, which tell for the 
view already advanced as to the preservation in the 
citizen mind of the ancient traditions of the city. 
I will quote one good instance. " The Lord Mayor 
being invited by the Reader of the Inner Temple 
to his feast (9th March 1668-9), the gentlemen 
took offence at the sword being carried up within 
the precincts, and would not suffer him to proceed. 
He betook himself to Mr Philippe's chamber and 

i Hist, MSS. Com., xi. (v.) pp. 143-4. 



DECADENCE 251 

there was obliged to stay all day. The Recorder and 
sheriffs related this dispute to the King in Council, 
who sent a clerk in his name to command them to 
forbear further disorder, but that little prevailed. At 
last the Lord Chamberlain was sent to find some 
expedient for the matter. The issue was that the 
Lord Mayor returned without any dinner about seven 
at night with his sword up, but by a back way through 
Ram Alley." * This story is quaint enough, but not 
only is it the continuance in Jacobean London of 
city rights fought for in earlier times, but it was a 
struggle shared in by the whole city. The city, we 
are told in the same correspondence, " so much 
resents the late affront done to the Lord Mayor 
that I hear there is a guard of three hundred men 
placed about the Temple to secure it from the rage 
of the apprentices, who otherwise, it is thought, 
would pull it down to the ground." The city's 
rights were still of moment to the citizens, all 
unconscious as they were that this right had pro- 
bably descended from Roman times. 2 

We now come to the problem presented by the 
expansion of London, which under the Tudors played 
so important a part in London history. Under the 
Stuarts it assumed a still more important position. 
It reveals the same two significant phases, the crippling 

1 Hist. MSS. Com., xii. (vii.) pp. 62, 63. 

2 The interesting and archaic custom of the sword being 
carried point upwards is discussed in my Index of Municipal Offices, 
pp. 17-19 3 and I have not much to alter in the opinions there 
expressed. 



252 LONDON 

of city jurisdiction within the city area and the entire 
want of jurisdiction outside the city. 

The beginning of Stuart action was undoubtedly 
for good. King James was possessed of some sort of 
an ideal. In a proclamation issued by James I. in 
1604 he forbade the erection of any new house in 
the city of London, or within one mile thereof, 
" except all the utter wals and windowes thereof, and 
the forefront of the same, be wholly made of bricke, 
or bricke and stone." Also the forefront of the new 
building was to be of a prescribed uniform " order 
and forme," according to the street in which it was 
situated. Similar proclamations were issued in 1G07 
and 1608. None of them, however, appears to have 
had much effect, and in 1615, irritated at the little 
success which had attended his efforts, the king 
issued a further proclamation, in which he announced 
his intention, " now and hereafter, to leave words, and 
to act and execute Our Princely ordinances on that 
behalfe, and not to make discourse or recitall of 
them." The provisions of the former proclamations 
were confirmed, and the hope was expressed that 
" as it was said by the first emperor of Rome, that he 
had found the city of Rome of bricke, and left it of 
marble, so that Wee, whom God hath honoured to 
be the first king of Great Britaine, mought bee able 
to say in some proportion, that Wee had found Our 
citie and suburbs of London of stickes, and left them 
of bricke, being a materiall farre more durable, safe 
from fire, beautifull and magnificent." These are 



DECADENCE 253 

brave words, and they indicate brave hopes — hopes 
that in Stuart hands were never encouraged to 
fruition. 

Five years later a proclamation of a much more 
comprehensive character was issued. The district 
affected was extended to five miles from the city 
gates. Not only was the requirement to build in 
brick or stone repeated, but minute regulations were 
laid down as to number and height of storeys, build- 
ing materials, thickness of walls, size of windows, and 
a number of other details, and it was provided that 
all walls should be built straight upwards without 
"jutties, or jutting or cant windowes." Edicts of 
similar purport, but only applying to a distance of 
three miles from the city gates or the Palace of 
Westminster, were issued by Charles I. in 1625 and 
1630. In 1656 the question was for the first time 
dealt with by the legislature, the Commonwealth 
Parliament in that year including in their Act " for 
the preventing of the multiplicity of buildings in and 
about the suburbs of London, and within ten miles 
thereof," provisions dealing with the use of stone and 
brick, and the building of walls straight up. 

The indications which these proclamations supply 
were not carried out in any one aspect. A passage 
in one of the Chamberlain letters a few months 
before the death of Queen Elizabeth (27th June 
1602) exhibits an extraordinary policy in operation. 
" The Council have lately spied a great inconveni- 
ence of the increase of housing within and without 



254 LONDON 

London, by building over stables, in gardens, and 
other odd corners, where upon they have taken order 
to have them pulled down ; and this week they 
have begun almost in every parish to light on the 
inhabitants, here and there one, which, God knows, is 
far from removing the mischief." * 

Again, in 1615, when, chiefly for the purpose of 
recruiting the royal exchequer, these arbitrary pro- 
clamations were rigorously put in force, the same 
writer says : " But the inquiry after New Buildings 
within seven miles of the town, since the King's 
coming-in, goes on amain, and last week the whole 
Council, from the highest to the lowest, brought 
down a Commission, and sat at Guildhall about it. 
If they should proceed with rigour and extremity, 
they might raise a great mass of money, as is thought, 
but it would cause much murmur and complaint." 
And that it was persevered in appears from another 
passage in the following month, when Chamberlain 
writes : " All manner of projects are still on foot, but 
the New Buildings bring in most profit." 2 

An historian of that reign, Arthur Wilson, 3 describes 
the consequences of this policy to have been that 
" many men laid out their whole estates upon little 
hovels ; or, not well heeding the Proclamation, and 
building fair houses upon new foundations, though it 
were but two yards from the old, became trespassers, 

1 Nichol's Progresses, etc., of Queen Elizabeth, vol. iii. p. 578. 

2 Nichol's Progresses, etc., of King James 1., vol. iii. pp. 92, 93. 

3 Hist, of Great Britain, 1653, fol. 



DECADENCE 



255 



and were obliged either to purchase their houses at a 
dear rate or pull them down — both ways tending to 
their ruin." 

The shame of this state of things is lasting. It is 
too great for remedy, and by it the city was deprived 
of a chance to be greater than it had ever been. A 




iQ lH!!il! mi^'cd^M 







'/../.J.,,-..,/,. ,,/„,,/;/; .'/„/ 




Sir Christopher Wren's plan for rebuilding London after the fire in 1666. 

still greater chance came later, and the city did not 
rise to it. The calamity of the great fire might have 
been turned to the benefit of London during succeed- 
ing ages, for Sir Christopher Wren was at hand to 
direct public thought towards a great ideal. There 
can be no doubt the king supported him. An order 
of the king in Council was issued on 21st September 
1666 concerning the form of the new buildings, which 
are to be of brick and stone, with a quay all along 



256 LONDON 

the riverside ; l and in the building of St Paul's a 
newsletter of 10th November 1672 relates that "he 
caused a most curious model to be made by his 
surveyor, Dr Wren, which he has been pleased to 
approve and order to be done according to it. It is 
rather bigger than the old foundation, and will be an 
incomparable piece of work." 2 This, fortunately, was 
quite true, and on 18th May 1675 the king ordered 
the building "to be begun out of hand, and that they 
build a quire first, and so as the revenue shall come in 
to proceed on other parts according to the model now 
approved on by him." The touch of definiteness here 
is a really great act — the building is to be begun out 
of hand, and we possess it now, one of the architectural 
glories of the country. St Paul's, however, was the 
centre of a new London, and Wren thought to make 
the surroundings equal to the centre. He could not 
make headway with the competition for sites amidst 
the charred ruins of the city. In 1667 it is reported 
that " they are laying foundations, especially in the 
great streets from Cornhill to Temple Bar, and there 
was great contest among the several parishes to 
preserve their own churches, to whose repairs those 
which are to be pulled down must contribute." ; 
The king would not give up amusing himself in St 

1 Hist. MSS. Com., xii. (vii.) p. 42. 

2 Ibid., pp. 97, 119. It is curious to see Wren building St Paul's 
Cathedral and at the same time " disfurnishing " four or five places 
erected by " nonconformists of several persuasions " in and about 
the city. Ibid., p. 71. 

a Ibid., (vii.) p. 47. 



DECADENCE 257 

James's Park and his palace of Whitehall for one more 
touch of definiteness. His amusement, however, has 
conferred a lasting benefit upon London, namely, the 
acquisition and laying out of the Green Park, and 
there is again the touch of definite action. A news- 
letter of 21st May 1667 conveys the information that 
" His Majesty has given order for taking several 
adjacent fields into his park of St James's, namely, 
from the Lord Chancellor's new house all along 
Knightsbridge highway round the Physic Garden, 
and so to come in at Whitehall behind Goring 
House." 1 

Wren's town-planning scheme was a great effort. 
It remains as a London ideal — one of the many 
London ideals to which London has not responded. 
John Evelyn, too, had a scheme ; and these two 
Londoners of the decadent age did their best for the 
city. Wren prefaces his description of the plan he 
proposed by saying that " some intelligent persons 
thought it highly requisite the city in restoration 
should rise with that beauty by the straightness and 
regularity of buildings and convenience for commerce, 
by the well disposing of streets and public places and 
the opening of wharfes, etc., which the excellent 
situation, wealth, and grandeur of the metropolis of 
England did justly deserve ; in respect also of the 
rank she bore with all other trading cities of the 
world, of which, tho' she was before one of the richest 
in estate and dowry, yet unquestionably the least 

1 Hist. MSS. Com., xii. (vii.) p. 48. 

17 



258 



LONDON 



beautiful." ! Evelyn entitled his plan, " London re- 
stored not to its pristine, but to a far greater beauty, 
commodiousness, and magnificence." 2 His plan was 
to use the rubbish resulting from the fire " to fill up, 
or at least to give a partial level to, some of the 
deepest vallies, holes, and more sudden declivities 




John Evelyn's plan for rebuilding London after the fire in 1666. 

within the city, for instance, that from the Fleet to 
Ludgate." 

It was all, however, fruitless. Pepys exactly de- 
scribes the situation on 24th February 1667. " By 
and by comes Sir Robert Viner and my Lord Mayor 
to ask the King's directions about measuring out the 
streets according to the new Act for building of the 

1 Wren, Parentalia, part ii. sect. ii. pp. 267-271. See Appendix 
VIII. 

2 Evelyn's plan is to be found in Maitland's Hist, of London, 
1772, vol. i. p. 447. 



DECADENCE 259 

City, wherein the King is to be pleased. But he 
says that the way proposed in Parliament by Colonel 
Birch would have been the best, to have chosen 
some persons in trust and sold the whole ground, 
and let it be sold again by them with preference 
to the old owner, which would have certainly caused 
the city to be built where these trustees pleased ; 
whereas now great differences will be, and the streets 
built by fits and not entire till all differences be 
decided. This, as he tells it, I think would have 
been the best way." " Streets built by fits and not 
entire " are bitter words from the diary of the great 
official of King Charles' day. They are applicable to 
the present-day London, and are in direct contrast to 
the spirit of the Act of 1667. This Act is literature 
as well as statute, and some of its clauses are 
valuable contributions towards the understanding of 
Stuart London. The preamble is as follows : — 

" Forasmuch as the City of London, being the 
Imperial seat of his Majesty's Kingdoms, and re- 
nowned for trade and Commerce throughout the 
AVorld ; by reason of a most dreadful Fire lately 
happening therein, was for the most part thereof 
burnt down and destroyed within the Compass of 
a few Days, and now lies buried in its own Ruins : 
For the speedy Restauration whereof, and for the 
better Regulation, Uniformity, and Gracefulness of 
such new Buildings as shall be erected for Habita- 
tions in order thereunto ; and to the End that great 
and outrageous Fires (through the Blessing of 



260 LONDON 

Almighty God), so far forth as human Providence 
(with submission to the Divine Pleasure) can foresee, 
may be reasonably prevented or obviated for the 
Time to come, both by the Matter and Form of 
such Building : And further, to the Intent that all 
Encouragement and Expedition may be given unto, 
and all Impediments and Obstructions that may 
retard or protract the Undertaking or carrying on 
a Work so necessary, and of so great Honour and 
Importance to his Majesty and this Kingdom, and 
to the rest of his Majesty's Kingdoms and Dominions, 
may be removed." 

This is followed by some of the most important 
clauses ever contained in an Act of Parliament for 
local purposes. 

" v. And, to the End that all Builders may the 
better know how to provide and fit their Materials 
for their several Buildings ; be it enacted, That there 
shall be only Four Sorts of Buildings, and no more ; 
and that all Manner of Houses so to be erected shall 
be one of these Four Sorts of Buildings, and no 
other ; (that is to say), The first and least Sort of 
Houses fronting By-lanes ; the Second Sort of 
Houses fronting Streets and Lanes of Note ; the 
Third Sort of Houses fronting high and principal 
Streets ; the Fourth and largest Sort of Mansion- 
houses for Citizens, or other Persons of extraordinary 
Quality, not fronting either of the three former 
Ways : And the Roofs of each of the said First 
Three Sorts of Houses respectively shall be uniform." 



DECADENCE 261 

" vi. And for avoiding any Uncertainty to the 
Builders or others herein, be it further enacted, That 
the Lord Mayor, Aldermen, and Common Council 
of the said City for the Time being shall on or before 
the First Day of April next ensuing, declare which 
and how many shall hereafter be accounted and 
taken to be By-lanes, which and how many shall 
hereafter be deemed Streets or Lanes of Note, and 
high and principal Streets, by Act of Common 
Council to be passed for that Purpose. ..." 



" xv. And be it further enacted, That if any 
Person or Persons, Bodies Politick or Corporate, 
being seised, possessed, or interested, of or in any 
Ground which was formerly builded upon, and the 
Houses thereupon being now burned or pulled down 
at the Time of the late Fire, shall not within Three 
Years next ensuing build up the same ; That then 
the Mayor, Aldermen, and Common Council of the 
City of London, by Act of Common Council, may 
cause Proclamation to be publickly made between 
the Hours of Twelve and Two of the Clock in the 
Afternoon, as well at or upon the said Ground, as 
also at or upon the publick Exchange of the said 
City, thereby to give Notice to all Persons that shall 
be or may be therein concerned, to cause the same 
to be rebuilded, according to the Direction of this 
present Act, within the Space of Nine months then 
next following : And in Case the Owners thereof, 



262 LONDON 

or other Person or Persons having Interest therein, 
shall refuse or neglect to rebuild the same, in Manner 
and within such Time as aforesaid, That then in 
such Case the said Mayor and Court of Aldermen 
of the said City are hereby authorised to issue out 
Warrants to the Sheriffs of London for the Time 
being, requiring them to impanel and return before 
them a Jury of good and lawful Men of the said 
City ; which the said Sheriffs are hereby authorised 
and required to do accordingly ; which Jury so re- 
turned shall, upon their Oaths, to be administered 
to them by the said Mayor and Court of Aldermen 
(who are likewise hereby authorised to administer the 
same), enquire, estimate, and assess, the true and 
just Value of such void Ground, according to their 
Judgements : And that from and after such Inquiry 
and Valuation thereof made as aforesaid, by Inquest 
of the said Jury, it shall and may be lawful to and 
for the said Mayor, Aldermen, and Common Council 
of the said City, to make Sale of the Fee or Inherit- 
ance thereof, by Conveyance under their Common 
Seal, to any Person or Persons that will purchase 
the same, at such Price at which the same shall have 
been so as aforesaid estimated and valued by the 
said Jury ; and the Monies thereupon to be received 
of the Purchasers thereof shall be paid into the 
Chamber of London, and from thence to be issued 
out and paid by the Chamberlain of London for the 
Time being, unto such Persons who shall have any 
Estate or Interest into or out of the same, according 



DECADENCE 263 

to his or their respective Estate or Estates, Title or 
Interest : Which sale so made and inrolled of 
Record, according to the Custom or Usage of the 
said City for inrollment of Bargains and Sales, shall 
be final and conclusive of all other Persons whatso- 
ever, and shall bar them, their Heirs and Assigns, 
to claim any Estate, Right, Title, or Interest of, in, 
or out of the Grounds so sold, precedent to the said 
Sale ; and the Purchaser or Purchasers thereof, his 
and their Heirs and Assigns, shall and may, by 
Virtue of this Act, have, hold, and enjoy the same 
against all Persons claiming any Estate, Right, Title, 
or Interest into or out of the same, his and their 
Heirs, Executors, Administrators, and Assigns, freed 
and discharged of and from all Incumbrances in 
Estate, Title, Charge, or otherwise, precedent to the 
said Sale." 



" xxiii. And whereas many antient Streets and 
Passages within the said City and Liberties thereof, 
and amongst others those which are hereafter men- 
tioned, were narrow and incommodious for Carriages 
and Passengers, and prejudicial to the Trade and 
Health of the Inhabitants, and are necessary to be 
inlarged as well for the Convenience as Ornament of 
the City, be it enacted by the Authority aforesaid, 
That the Mayor, Aldermen, and Commons of the 
said City for the Time being, in Common Council 
assembled, shall and may, and are hereby impowered 



264 LONDON 

and required to enlarge all and every the Streets and 
Places hereafter mentioned, where and in such Manner 
as there shall be Cause, by and with the Approbation 
of His Majesty, and not otherwise ; that is to say, the 
Street called Fleet Street. ..." 



" xxv. And to the End that reasonable Satisfac- 
tion may be given for all such Ground as shall be 
taken and employed for the Uses aforesaid ; the 
Mayor, Aldermen, and Common Council shall and 
may treat and agree with the Owners and others 
interested therein ; And if there shall be any Persons, 
Bodies Corporate or Collegiate, that shall wilfully 
refuse to treat and agree, as aforesaid, or through any 
Disability by Nonage, Coverture, or especial Entail, 
or other Impediment, cannot ; that in such Cases 
the said Lord Mayor and Court of Aldermen are 
hereby authorised, by virtue of this Act, to issue out 
a Warrant or Warrants to the Sheriffs of London, 
who are hereby required accordingly to impanel and 
return a Jury before the said Lord Mayor and Court 
of Aldermen : Which Jury, upon their Oaths to be 
administered by the said Lord Mayor and Court of 
Aldermen, are to inquire and assess such Damage 
and Recompence as they shall judge fit to be awarded 
to the Owners, and others interested, according to 
their several and respective Interests and Estates of 
and in any such Houses or Ground, or any Part 
thereof, for their respective Interests and Estates in 



DECADENCE 265 

the same, as by the said Lord Mayor, Aldermen, and 
Commons, in Common Council assembled, shall be 
adjudged fit to be converted for the Purposes afore- 
said : and such Verdict of the Jury, and Judgement 
of the said Lord Mayor and Court of Aldermen there- 
upon, and the Payment of the Sum or Sums of Money 
so awarded or adjudged to the Owners, and others 
having Estate or Interest, or Tender and Refusal 
thereof, shall be binding to all Intents and Purposes 
against the said Parties, their Heirs, Executors, 
Administrators, and Assigns, and others claiming any 
Title or Interest in the said Houses or Ground, and 
shall be a full authority for the said Lord Mayor, 
Aldermen, and Commons, to cause the same to be 
converted and used for the Purposes aforesaid." 

" xxvi. And forasmuch as the Houses now re- 
maining, and to be rebuilt, will receive more or less 
Advantage in the Value of the Rents, by the Liberty 
of Air, and free Recourse for Trade, and other Con- 
veniences by such Regulation and Inlargement ; it 
is also enacted by the Authority aforesaid, That in 
case of Refusal or Incapacity, as aforesaid, of the 
Owners, or others interested of or in the said Houses, 
to agree and compound with the said Lord Mayor, 
Aldermen, and Commons for the same, thereupon a 
Jury shall and may be impanneled in Manner and 
Form aforesaid, to judge and assess upon the Owners, 
and others interested of and in such Houses, such 
competent Sum and Sums of Money with respect 
to their several Interests, in Consideration of such 



266 LONDON 

Improvement and Melioration, as in Reason and 
good Conscience they shall think fit : And all Sums 
of Money that shall be so assessed and raised as 
aforesaid, shall be paid to the Chamberlain of the City 
of London for the Time being, who is hereby enabled 
from Time to Time to receive and recover the same 
by Action at Law, and whose receipt shall be a good 
Discharge to such Owners, or others interested ; and 
who is hereby appointed to receive and pay, and be 
accountable for the same according to such Directions 
as shall from Time to Time be given him by the said 
Lord Mayor, Aldermen, and Commons : and the 
Money so raised shall be wholly imployed towards 
Payment and Satisfaction of such Houses and 
Grounds as shall be converted into Streets, Passages, 
Markets, and other publick Places aforesaid : And 
such Satisfaction so given, or tendered and refused, 
as aforesaid, shall divest the Propriety, Estate, and 
Interest of the respective Owners, and others having 
Interest of and in such Parcels of Ground so to be 
taken and imployed for the Uses aforesaid, by virtue 
of this Act: Which shall be and are hereby actually 
settled and invested in the said Lord Mayor, Common- 
alty, and Citizens of the City of London, and their 
Successors, in like Manner as other the common 
Streets and Highways within the said City." 

This is a drastic measure. Owners cannot do as 
they like, and they must not delay the development 
of the city. It is well to know that such a measure 
could be obtained from a Stuart monarch and a Stuart 



DECADENCE 2G7 

Parliament when necessity demanded, and it stands 
as a lesson to later ages. It is well to know also that 
Parliament contained a member whose scheme was 
more drastic and more comprehensive. London at 
that moment, in its ruined condition, was one great 
estate, and the scheme of Colonel Birch submitted to 
Parliament sought to have it rebuilt on this principle. 
If Parliament had only listened, owners and city 
would have benefited and the capital city would have 
been a great city. 

The city authorities benefited their own property 
even if they neglected the city. This we learn from 
an interesting document preserved by the Dean and 
Chapter of the Cathedral. It is the "demise by 
the Dean and Chapter of St Paul's to the Mayor, 
Commonalty, and Citizens of London, of all that parte 
and soe much of the ground and soile of the foundacon 
of the old maine wall heretofore encompassing the 
churchyard of the said cathedral church of St Paul, 
London, as is hereinafter menconed. viz., from the 
gateway or passage leading out of the said church- 
yard into Cheapside westward unto Cannon Alley, 
between the several grounds and tenements belonging 
to the Lord Bishop of London and the said Deane 
and Chapter and others fronting south upon the said 
churchyard and the ground tenements of the said 
Mayor and Cominalty and Cittizens, fronting north 
upon Paternoster Rowe two hundred and seaventy 
foote of assize or thereabouts in length, and in breadth 
(the thicknesse of the said wall in the foundacon 



268 LONDON 

being) fowre foote of assize or thereabouts, and from 
Cannon Alley westward to St Paul's Alley more one 
hundred and seaventy foote in length, of the same 
breadth, the whole containing on that side one 
thousand seaven hundred and three score superflciall 
feete of assize be the same more or less. And also 
from the gateway or passage late called St Augustin's 
Gate, leading out of the said church yard into Watling 
Streete, northward to the house in the Old Chaunge 
in the occupacon of John Cobb or of his assignes or 
undertenants, in length forty foote of assize and two 
foote broad, and from another house in the old 
Chaunge adjoining to Cobb's on the north side and 
now in the occupacon of John Brattle, gentleman, or 
of his assignes or undertenants, northward to the 
freehold of Mr Myles Martyn, heretofore called Jesus 
Steeple, betweene the ground and tenements belong- 
ing to the said Mayor, Cominalty, and Cittizens, front- 
ing east upon the old Chaunge and the schoole and 
schoolehouse and other tenements fronting west upon 
the said churchyard, in length one hundred fowrescore 
and two feete of assize and in breadth two feete, the 
whole contayning on that side fowre hundred forty 
and fowre superflciall feete of assize be the same 
more or less, which ground and soyle of the said wall 
hereby demised, being in the whole two thousand two 
hundred a fowre foote of assize or thereabouts, is 
intended for the enlargement or other accomodacon 
of the severall mesuages, houses, and tenements of 
the said Mayor, Cominalty, and Cittizens, in the old 



DECADENCE 269 

Chaunge and in Paternoster Rowe aforesaid, which were 
burnt downe by the late dreadfull fire in London." 1 

This interesting document is of great moment, his- 
torically and topographically. We not only gather 
from it that the city did not lend itself to an en- 
larged planning of London, but we know from it 
how the walls enclosing St Paul's in mediaeval days 
were dealt with after the fire. We were interested 
in the walls enclosing St Paul's in a former chapter, 
and we could from this document construct the plan 
of them on the ground as it exists to-day. 

The city benefited very little by the great Act of 
Parliament, and outer London not at all. There the 
old story went on. People in their own interests 
were allowed to develop new building schemes in a 
most unexpected manner, and there are many con- 
temporary documents to prove this. Thus in a peti- 
tion of William Lord Monson, Peter de la Motte, 
and four other inhabitants of Covent Garden, to the 
Lords of the Privy Council against the proposal of 
one Brett, a chandler, to build twelve tenements 
between Covent Garden and Drury Lane, it is con- 
tended that these tenements, being in a blind and 
obscure place, will be fit only for poor and mean 
people, who will cause them much inconvenience ; and 
they protest against " such pestering of multitudes of 
families and poore people together in such by-places 

1 Hist. MSS. Com., ix. pp. 58-59. The demise is for forty years 
at a yearly rent of £\4>, is. Od., and is dated 6th July 1670. This 
should be compared with the agreement of 1282, ante, p. 147. 



270 LONDON 

to suffocate each other," urging that " it wilbe an 
evill example for all such other (more affected to 
their own private lucre than the publique good) to 
build and erect like tenements in every piece of ground 
or garden plott nere the said Covent Garden." These 
are admirable sentiments if they represent the true 
state of things, and in any case they indicate a view 
of the expansion of London which might have pro- 
duced good results if it had been allowed to have its 
proper weight in the council. 1 

There is, however, another side to the picture, and 
a record of the doings of the commissioners of sewers 
will give some idea of the sanitary condition of the 
city. In 1685-6, 27th January, it is reported by one 
of the commissioners that the commissioners "first 
sat at Hicks Hall to consider Turnmill Brook sewer, 
stopped by much filth thrown into it. They next 
kept sessions in Whitechapel, where they considered 
the sewer coming from Spitalfields, which runs almost 
four miles before it gets into the Thames, through 
Stepney town and close to the churchway which leads 
to Stepney church, and almost all the way open, and 
brings down a very noisome water, the Walloons and 
strangers there living much upon cabbage and roots, 
to the great offence of the inhabitants as to health 
and other ways." 2 

In the attempted rebuilding of the city under 

1 Hist. MSS. Com., xi. (vii.) p. 290. The document is undated, 
but it is of the seventeenth century. 

2 Ibid., xi. (v.) p. 129. 



DECADENCE 271 

James I. the city corporation is not allowed to be 
concerned. It was all His Majesty the King, the 
" Wee " of the Stuart kingship. It was the king's 
council who attempted to recruit the royal exchequer 
from the new buildings of London. It was the king 
who began the new St Paul's " out of hand." It was 
Parliament who settled the lines upon which rebuilding 
after the fire was to take place. It was the common 
council of the city who were to carry out the wishes 
of Parliament. It was a sewerage commission that 
tried to stem the difficulties of a polluted city. There 
is no common policy in all this activity and inactivity, 
and one begins to wonder what the ancient city, with 
all its ancient powers untouched, was doing. One 
thing is quite clear. The alternate action and inaction 
of the king and the king's court were quite disastrous 
to the ancient controlling powers of the city, which, 
even in connection with its most important functions 
as the home of city trade organisation, was beginning 
to feel the effect of unregulated expansion. 

We take one example, a picturesque and a drastic 
case. A petition was addressed to Sir Martin Lumley 
Knight, lord mayor in 1623-4, by "divers young 
men free of the Goldsmiths' company, inhabitants of 
the Strand, stating that being established in an open 
and convenient place of ancient custom for Goldsmiths, 
and in the high street between the Court and the 
city, yet tendering their willing obedience to perform 
his Majesty's desire for the replenishing of the Gold- 
smiths Rows in Cheapside, and to express their love 



272 LONDON 

to the city and the company of which they were 
members, they had informed the wardens of their 
company, and they now intimated to his Lordship 
their willingness to undergo the losses, which were 
likely to be great, and remove to Cheapside, if some 
steps were taken that they might have the shops and 
houses of the Goldsmiths Rents now shut up or in- 
habited by others of meaner trades at the rates they 
were given to the company for the advancement of 
young men of the same." 1 This is the cry from the 
city to the expanding area beyond. Goldsmiths Row 
stood opposite the Cross in Cheapside, on the south 
side of the street. It was a superb pile of dwellings, 
extending from the west to Bread Street, and was 
erected in 1491. Stow describes it as "the most 
beautiful Frame of fay re houses and shoppes that 
bee within the Walles of London, or elsewhere in 
England, commonly called Goldsmithes Rowe, be- 
twixt Bredstreet end and the Crosse in Cheape, but is 
within this Bredstreete warde ; the same was builded 
by Thomas Wood, Goldsmith, one of the Sheriffes of 
London, in the yeare 1491. It contayneth in number 
tenne fayre dwelling houses, and foureteene shoppes, 
all in one Frame uniformely builded foure stories high, 
bewtified towardes the streete with the Goldsmithes 
Armes, and the likenes of Woodmen in memory of 
his name, riding on monstrous Beasts : all which is 
cast in Lead, richly painted over, and gilt." 2 To 

1 Rememhrancia, p. 106. 

2 Stow, Survey (edit. Kingsford), vol. i. p. 345. 



DECADENCE 273 

leave a place such as this shut up is to express in 
practical terms the change the city was undergoing 
by expansion. The king had to intervene. The 
governance of the trade gild was not strong enough. 
The "high street between the Court and the city" 
was the dominant factor in the case, and we see before 
us the insidious tapping of the ancient city founda- 
tions by its fatal inattention to the facts which were 
rapidly developing towards the building up of a 
London no longer to be contained between mediaeval 
walls. The facts from one example can be repeated 
in example after example from city records, and 
they represent the dominant note of Stuart London. 
Nothing was sacred to the Stuart sovereign except 
the sovereignty, and it is curious to observe how the 
city was pitted against the claims of outer London 
instead of the anomalies being healed by constitutional 
reforms. Thus Mr Attorney General in his argument 
for the King against the City, dated 1st May 1683, 
insisted, inter alia, " particularly upon the great op- 
pressions used by them towards His Majesty's subjects 
in exacting certain taxes from all that came to their 
markets which ought to be free, that by the same 
authority that they exacted £5000 per annum as was 
computed they might as lawfully exact £10,000 a 
year." 1 The argument was a good one, and it re- 
mains in being at the present moment. But the 
consequent action on the argument was never taken, 
and the one great opportunity of the city expanding 

1 Hist. MSS. Com., Egmont MSS., ii. 130. 

18 



274 LONDON 

to its proper limits, as it expanded physically, was not 
only lost but was deliberately set aside. The result 
was that the ancient traditional policy remaining 
within the city was confronted with the unformed 
policy arising without, and the historian from this 
stage onward has to deal with the dual position. 

It is not that Stuart London possessed no features 
upon which new conceptions of London could have 
been founded. Contemporary literature and corre- 
spondence is full of the glories of Stuart London. 
In the crown Garland of Golden Roses, first printed 
in 1612, and enlarged in 1659, there are verses which 
give us a picture of the Thames which can scarcely be 
imagined by the present generation. The verses occur 
only in the second edition, but it is fair to presume 
they represented the state of things in the earlier period. 
They occur in a ballad relating to the " lamentable 
fall of the great Duchess of Gloucester, the wife of 
Duke Humphrey," the celebrated Elinor Cobham : 

" Then flaunted I in Greenwich's stately towers, 
My winter's mansions and my summer's bowers ; 
Which gallant house now since those days hath been 
The palace brave of many a king and queen. 

The silver Thames, that sweetly pleas'cl mine eye, 
ProcurM me golden thoughts of majesty; 
The kind contents and murmur of the water 
Made me forget the woes that would come after." 1 

1 It is interesting to note the great frosts of this period. In 
1608 "the Thames began to put on his freeze coat and hath kept 
it on till now, this latter end of January," and a description of it 
is printed in Arber's English Garner, vol. i. pp. 77-99- 



DECADENCE 275 

In The Glory of England, 1618, London and Paris 
were thus contrasted : 

" If I beginne not at first with too sullen or concise 
a question ; more then the new gallery of the Louvre, 
and the suburbes of St Germanes, as it is now re- 
edified, what one thing is worthy obseruation or 
wonder within Paris ; as for London, but that you 
will say my particular loue transporteth mee, it hath 
many specialities of note, eminence, and amazement ; 
and for greatnes it selfe, I may well maintain, that if 
London and the places adioyning were circummunited 
in such an orbicular manner, it would equall Paris for 
all the riuers winding about, and the fine bridges 
sorting to an vniformity of streets ; and as wee now 
behold it, the crosse of London is euery way longer 
then you can make in Paris, or any citie of Europe : 
but because peraduenture you will not vnderstand 
what I meane by this word crosse, it shall be thus 
explained, that from St Georges in Southwarke to 
Shoreditch South and North ; and from Westminster 
to St Katherines or Ratcliff, West and East, is a 
crosse of streets, meeting at Leaden- Hall, euery 
way longer, with broad spaciousnesse, handsome 
monuments, illustrious gates, comely buildings, and 
admirable markets, then any you can make in 
Paris, or euer saw in other city, yea Constantinople 
itselfe. 

" In London the Citizen liues in the best order 
with very few houses of Gentlemen interposed, and in 
our suburbs the Nobility haue so many and stately 



270 LONDON 

dwellings, that one side of the riuer may compare 
with the Gran Canale of Venice. But if you examine 
their receipt and capacity, Venice and all the cities of 
Europe must submit to the truth. Nay, in London 
and the places adioyning, you haue a thousand 
seuerall houses wherein I will lodge a thousand 
seuerall men with conueniency : match vs now if 
you can. 

"In steed of ill fauoured woodden bridges, many 
times endangered with tempests and frosts, you haue 
in London such a bridge that, without ampliation of 
particulars, is the admirablest monument, and firmest 
erected structure in that kinde of the Vniuerse, 
whether you respect the foundation, with the con- 
tinuall charge and orderly endeauours to keepe the 
arches substantiall, or examine the vpper buildings, 
being so many, and so beautifull houses, that it is 
a pleasure to beholde them, and a fulnesse of con- 
tentment to vnderstand their vses conferred vpon 
them." 

A letter from John Evelyn, dated 14th February 
1679-80, exists among the Ormonde papers. It takes 
us outside the city, and gives an interesting account 
of " Chelsey House." He regrets that his lordship 
rejects the opportunity " for the purchasing of that 
sweet place at Chelsey upon so easy terms. ... I 
have formerly acquainted your lordship with the 
particulars, that beside a magnificent house capable 
of being made perfectly modish, the offices, gardens, 
and other accommodations for air, water, situation, 



DECADENCE 277 

vicinity to London, benefit of the river, and medio- 
crity of price are nowhere to be paralleled, I am sure, 
about this town or any that I know in England. 
There are with it to be added as many orange trees 
and other precious greens as are worth £500 ; the 
fruits of the gardens are exquisite ; there is a snow 
house — in a word, I know of no place more capable 
of being made the envy of the noble retreats of the 
greatest persons near this Court and city." Then 
follow " particulars of Chelsey House : There belongs 
to Chelsey House sixteen acres of ground, with several 
large gardens and courts all walled in and planted 
with the choicest fruits that could be collected either 
from abroad or in England. The outhousing is very 
good, ample, and commodious, and all the offices 
supplied with excellent water. . . . For this particular, 
with the addition of all orange trees and other greens, 
fruit, and flowers of all kinds, with seats, rollers, 
tables, and all garden utensils ; also within the house 
all fixed necessaries, as grates, chimney-pieces, and 
wainscot, the billiard table and a pair of marble 
tables and house clock, there will be paid £5000. 
Thus offered, 26th June 1679, by Sir Stephen 
Fox." 1 

In 1683 we have a delightful picture of London. 
" The Thames had been covered with ice since New 
Year's Day ; it is now the common road to West- 
minster, both on foot and in coaches, and much better 

1 Hist, MSS. Com., Ormonde Collection, new ser., vol. v. pp. 
279-80. 



278 LONDON 

than the streets. One entire street of booths is built 
over to Southwark, and infinite numbers scattered up 
and down." l 

In 1691 a great fire occurred at Whitehall, and it 
is worth quoting contemporary newsletters giving 
particulars of this great disaster, typical perhaps of 
the end of Whitehall as the home of despotic sove- 
reignty. On 11th April 1691 it is stated that "on 
Thursday between eight and nine o'clock at night a 
fire broke out in the uppermost part of that which 
was the Duchess of Portsmouth's lodgings at White- 
hall, which before it could be extinguished consumed 
that and all the pile of buildings fronting the Privy 
Garden, stretching itself to the waterside almost to 
the Privy stairs, and burnt the lodgings of the Duke 
of Gloucester, the Earls of Portland, Devon, Mon- 
mouth, Overkirke, and others, occasioned as it is 
generally reported by the carelessness of a woman 
servant, who, burning a single candle off from a parcel, 
it enkindled the wick of the others to that degree 
that it set fire to the apartment. The sentinel gave 
an alarm by firing his musket, which being heard by 

1 Hist. MSS. Com., xii. (vii.) p. 1.93. In 1620 the situation had 
not been so cheerful. The Lords of the Council write to the Lord 
Mayor and Aldermen complaining of the impassable state of the 
streets. "Though the frost had continued nearly three weeks 
no steps had been taken for the removal of the ice and snow, and 
they required immediate order to be given for the remedy of the 
inconvenience. It was their intention upon any further neglect 
to address themselves to the aldermen of the several wards where 
such abuses and inconvenience should be found, and call them to a 
strict account for the same." Remembrancia, pp. 481-2. 



o 

u 



to 



I 




5 X 

DO 

J -S 

1 > 

<! ob 

X o 
Ul 

H S 

X E 



DECADENCE 279 

the guard they came to extinguish it, shutting all the 

gates leading thereto. His Majesty was just at 

supper, and went forthwith with the Princess on foot 

to Arlington House." And then in 1697-8, January 

6th, we have in a private letter information as to the 

second fire, the writer saying that he " was all the 

night until five in the morning in the Privy Gardens 

in apprehension for my lodgings on account of the 

fire at Whitehall. Almost all Whitehall is gone. It 

burnt very furiously. The Banqueting Hall and 

Lord Portland's lodgings is almost all that is 

saved." 1 This is all that we have now, and the 

famous home of the Stuarts thus passed away and 

allowed of the building of government offices, with 

here and there basements belonging to the former 

palace. St James's Palace was all that was left for 

royal residence in London, and from this circumstance 

the Court of St James became the official title of the 

English Court. 

I have not been able to pay attention to the manu- 
facturing industries of London, but there is one 
interesting feature of Stuart London which it is well 
to record. It is the weaving of tapestry, already 
noted as a mediaeval industry. The Countess of 
Rutland was a patroness of the art, and a letter, 20th 
June 1670, describes the situation. The writer is 
unable " personally to attend my honoured Ladies 
commandes aboute her tapestry hangings. I shall 
cause both him att Mortlake and the other att 

1 Hist. MSS. Com., xii. (vii.) pp. 325, 349. 



280 LONDON 

Lambeth to attend you with theire patternes, the one 
with Hero and Leander, the latter with Vulcan and 
Venus, two of the best patternes now extant. ... I 
doubt you will hardly gett Hero made under 25s. 
per ell to be well don. The other I presume will 
come for 23s. per ell. My Lady in hir letter speakes 
of Poynze, but take it of my credditt he hath not one 
good peice of painting or designe by him, besides a 
deare prateing fellow that knowes not what good 
worke is. With which of them soever you treate, 
contract with him not to putt any sleezy silke in the 
worke, for that will soone grow rough and sully much 
sooner than Naples." On 12th July there is "an agree- 
ment by William Benood of Lambeth, tapisheere, for 
making six pieces of tapistry, 9 feet deep, from the 
design of Vulcan and Venus." Bel voir Castle con- 
tained many examples of tapestry before this addi- 
tion was made, and the inventory of 1667 includes 
eight pieces of tapestry of the story of Alexander 
in the great chamber, three pieces of " Mortlake 
hangings" of the Apostles in the best lodging, 
and eight pieces of the same hangings in my lady's 
chamber. 1 These are pleasant recollections. Lam- 
beth has now lost this great industry, and Mortlake 
retains only an inscription on the house where it 
was carried on (see Appendix IX.). 

Have we then from this conglomerate of contem- 
porary records succeeded in describing the true posi- 
tion of Stuart London in connection with the previous 

1 Hist. MSS. Com., xii. (v.) pp. 18, 20, 347. 



DECADENCE 281 

ages of London ? I think we have. It is disjointed 
evidence coming from a disjointed London. Nowhere 
do we find London doing anything greater than living 
on its past. Tudor London was disrupted by entirely 
new views, and to a large extent it lived on these 
views. They were great and expansive views. Stuart 
London possessed no new views, no discoverable 
views at all. All seems a patchwork made up of a 
want of conception both in the city itself and in 
Parliament. The city did well when it put ancient 
machinery into operation. It did ill by not extending 
the use of this machinery to meet the new conditions. 
Perhaps it could not trust Whitehall at its very gates, 
and therefore wrapped itself in as much of its ancient 
rules and practices as it could keep going. At all 
events, we know that Whitehall did not trust the city, 
and we have in this mutual mistrust the principal 
cause of the estrangement between London within 
the walls and the growing London without. The 
remarkable thing is that we have been able to detect 
amidst the strife of things so momentous as those 
which happened to Stuart London, elements which 
seem to enable us once more to pick up the line of 
continuity — in formulae if not in essence. The pre- 
sence of the formulas, however, may prove of greater 
significance than we think, if only it can be shown to 
contain two correlative elements — if it shows that 
the formulae used by the Stuart Court were derived 
from the principles resident in the minds of the 
citizens in common council assembled ; if it leads 



282 LONDON 

up to something more than formulas when the 
great occasion once more arises. It is as connect- 
ing links with the future that these formulas, if they 
be formula?, will prove to have retained the spark 
of life. 



CHAPTER X 

CHANGES AND REVIVAL 

There are several events which make it certain that 
Georgian London was distinct from Tudor and Stuart 
London in many ways. In the first place, it was not 
worried so much by the sovereign. Secondly, it 
turned to its own municipal affairs with something of 
its old spirit. It turned back to much of its own 
municipalism. Its actions may reveal fitfulness and 
inconsistency, but the underlying principle of its 
actions was neither fitful nor inconsistent in its 
application. Once more, under the Georges, London 
is a London to be loved. We did not trust Tudor 
London. We perhaps despised Stuart London. 
Though there is much in Georgian London which 
tells of a further break-up of history and tradition, 
though there is no effort to bring London to an 
accepted position as the capital city, though there 
are a thousand and one blots by which to estimate 
the might-have-been — there is still much to remind 
us of the older London. Once again we come upon 
a period not devoted to the ideal of London as 
history unfolds it, but containing a strong reference 

283 



284 LONDON 

back to ancient ideals. Once again we come upon 
a period when municipalism is strong, though upon 
narrow lines. Once again we are in the presence 
of the problem of expansion, though it appears in a 
more attractive form. Indeed, Georgian London, in 
the midst of the destruction of its buildings, is an 
attractive London. 

We have seen London taking a prominent position 
in relation to the sovereign. We have seen it acting 
in support of the House of Commons just when the 
Commons were definitely entering into its place in 
the sovereignty of the realm. We are now to see it 
take a prominent position in relation to Parliament, 
or rather to the House of Commons. The two posi- 
tions are part of the same original. London, always 
associated constitutionally with the sovereign power, 
comes into touch with Parliament when the sove- 
reign power became resident more in Parliament 
than in the personal sovereign. This appears to be a 
remarkable fact by itself, but it becomes still more 
remarkable when we consider the terms in which 
it is conveyed and the conscious expression of a con- 
tinuation from older and similar conditions. 

We cannot, of course, give the entire story, but the 
chief points are quite sufficient. First of all, the 
historical sequence is worth noting. London acted 
almost independently of the Anglo-Saxon kings ; 
exercised prominent constitutional powers during the 
Norman and Plantagenet rule ; neglected this position 
under the Tudors, and, in form at all events, revived 



CHANGES AND REVIVAL 285 

it, as we have seen, during the Stuart reign. London 
also, as we have seen, afforded shelter to the House 
of Commons at the moment when it was being 
attacked by the monarch to prevent it from taking 
its independent position in the sovereignty of the 
nation. We thus see the continuity of the central 
idea of a special position assumed by and allowed to 
London towards the state, changing the character of 
its expression as the state developed. 

In this continuity will be found the true significance 
of the action of London towards the Georgian Parlia- 
ment. It was expressed in 1761 by Horace Walpole, 
who protested against the Common Council presuming 
to " usurp the right of making peace and war." The 
Common Council, " as was its wont," we are told 
by Dr Sharpe, drew up instructions for the city 
members as to the policy they were to pursue in the 
Parliament of 1762. They were, among other things, 
to obtain the repeal of a recent Act for the relief of 
insolvent debtors, and to keep a sharp eye on "the 
distribution of the national treasure." These are 
extraordinary not ordinary city functions, and that 
they find expressions as ordinary acts is a significant 
factor. The well-known John Wilkes episodes pro- 
vide an all-important formula for such transactions. 
The sheriffs were called upon by the House of Lords 
to explain their action at the public burning of the 
famous No. 45 of the North Briton, edited by Wilkes, 
and the Duke of Bedford stated the case in the 
following terms : " Such behaviour in any smaller 



286 LONDON 

town would have forfeited their franchises. The 
Common Council had long been setting themselves up 
against Parliament." This is precisely the evidence 
which is required to support the historic view of this 
great transaction. London alone, not any other city, 
could take up such a line of action, and it is because 
London alone possessed the historic sense of the situa- 
tion, founded upon the historic continuity of events. 
Wilkes had been arrested on a general warrant, and 
the Common Council, on 21st February 1764, passed a 
vote of thanks to their members for their endeavour to 
obtain a parliamentary declaration as to the illegality 
of general warrants, and voted to Pratt, chief justice 
of the Common Pleas, who had pronounced the arrest 
to be illegal, the freedom of the city. The chief 
justice, in acknowledging the compliment, referred to 
the city as " the most respectable body in the king- 
dom after the two Houses of Parliament." Wilkes 
struggled on against his expulsion from Parliament 
after his election for Middlesex, and the city supported 
his claim, the freeholders of Middlesex meeting at 
Mile End and there resolving to stand by the repre- 
sentative of their choice. Wilkes was returned a 
fourth time as member of Parliament for Middlesex, 
and was rejected by the House of Commons. This 
act called up the city once again, and the lord mayor 
was called upon to summon a Common Hall, " for the 
purpose of taking the sense of the livery of London 
on the measures proper to be pursued by them in the 
present alarming situation of public affairs." The 



CHANGES AND REVIVAL 287 

lord mayor declined, but the livery had their way. for, 
at the Common Hall held for the election of sheriffs 
on 24th June 1769, they drew up their petition in no 
hesitating terms. They could get no redress, and in 
March 1770 a Common Hall was specially summoned, 
and passed another address, remonstrance, and petition 
to the king. Horace Walpole denounces this in 
terms which once again seem to help forward the 
historical character of the city's action : " A bolder 
declaration both against king and Parliament" was 
never seen. It did not stand alone, however, for later 
on, when Beckford, the lord mayor, delivered his 
memorable speech to the king, and when Chatham, 
writing to Beckford in the name of liberty, expressed 
himself in the language of history, " The spirit of 
old England spoke that never - to - be - forgotten 
speech. . . . Adieu, then, for the present (to call 
you by the most honourable of titles), true Lord 
Mayor of London, that is, first magistrate of the 
first city of the world ! " there were echoes of the 
old conditions. 

We cannot get away from the position here so 
remarkably unfolded. It is not political faction. It 
is constitutional and historical right, and throughout 
the entire period occupied by these pages we have not 
come across such great attributes nor such resounding 
titles produced by them. Hitherto there seems to 
have been no chance for London being acclaimed in 
this fashion. Statesmen of Plantagenet days looked 
askance at the liberty of the city. Statesmen of 



288 



LONDON 



Tudor and Stuart days denied its liberty. Statesmen 
of the Georgian period included the great Chatham, 
and so the political view of London is duly repre- 
sented. It brings to this last period the spirit of the 
early periods, and, though the constitutional position 
of the city in relation to Parliament was debated so 
fiercely, it was always on grounds which now appear 
to be quite remarkable in their historical aspect. 



The London 



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Evening Pod 



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t R i II A V. Mmk i] 



SATURDAY, Ma« 






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Rlfc2\}5 

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,. tUnM :■ ■ ' Hi 
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da Cmaitv. hi u.. 
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Chatham's letter does not complete the story, how- 
ever. Horace Walpole's Memoirs of George III. 
(vol. iv. p. 191) contains the story of the House of 
Commons' messenger who, in 1771, came to arrest 
Miller, the printer of the London Evening Post. It 
is full of incidents which illustrate the city's claim 
to its ancient rights. The lord mayor declared that 
no power had a right to seize a citizen of London 
without authority from him or some other magistrate, 
nor should he while he held that office ; the messenger 
of the House was committed for assault and bound 



CHANGES AND REVIVAL 



289 



over by sureties to appear at the Guildhall at the 
next session. Such high attacks on their authority 
roused the House of Commons and startled the min- 
isters. The entire proceedings are remarkable, but 
when " the House of Commons sent for the lord 



LoiiAiii Tavern j March 16, tjjl. 

Supporters of the Bill of Rights 

AT the e.vnf/4 rteuefi affevernl ALmkrs of 
this Society., a special Meeting is de-fired 
by tht Trtafltrtrs to be held on Tuejday next, to 
(tnftder offome Gratification to be given to thoje 
Printer/, tube, by appealing to the Laws of 
their Country, have done their Duty, in order to 
prrfervc the mofi invdhtMe, if not the only 
Right which Ji ill remains to Exglijhmen. 

T. Boddington, Secretary. 
Dinner en Table at Four e'Ci-cL 



Poftfcript, 

LONDON. 

Thurfday, in confequence of Colonel Onflow's 
motion, H. Baldwin, T. Evans, T. Wright, 
and S. Bladon* publtfhers of four evening papers, 
attended at the Houfe of Commons. While they 
were waiting there, T. Evans was fent for home, 
his wife having brake her leg. About ten o'clock 
H. R»ldw'm utm called la the b-<r. and after fo.ne 



foftmeftf . ( Almoft tvttj rftiBfc in t'ae room offered 
to h« bail for the MrfTl-nger. The Maufioa 
Hoili'e pas exceedingly fall of psnple, but not 
the leatt confufioa or diftuibance happened; 



J. MiiUr mnjt be -very irfenfeblt of tie bh-jfi,!gs 5/ 
the L-t-.vs under ivhiei he is froteijid, not to lake the 
carli.fi opportunity of returning bit vicj} grateful thanks 
to the Right Hint, the UrdMayar, for hi, ftria, yet 
li beral cid.-t/itttfiralicn if them to-tVards him ttfierd.iy. 
It day thing could add to toe aft, it mat bit Lord- 
/hip's patern.il cxprejjims in favour ef the liberties 
tf the jubjea—txfreffitm that will eboiays be hit 
heft tulo'giuat, and Laid his character Jingulurlj dear 
to the Citizens (/London. 

He tiketuifi rcturr.s lis refpeeTftU tbattis H Mejrs. 
Aldermen l-'/ilus, and Oliver; — the firmer of "theft 
gentlemen gr.-i.-e a fiefh proof cf his unwearied ejffi- 
dtiity in the great cause of FREt'.'ou — the 
latter Jhewed himfelf t-very ivay worthy the confi- 
dents of his confiittttnts. 

He finally expr/ffts his obligations to Robert Mcr- 
rir, Efq; Counfellor at Law, ivbofe judicious and 
animated conduit he will ever remember with era.' 
til tide and eft can. 



This night there will be 3 Prity Council held 
on ecc.ifion of the determination yeilerday at the 
Manfion-houfe. 

Paul Davrell. Gent, is anDointed a I.ieur*. 



From the London Evening Post, March 14-16, 1771. 

mayor's book, and tore out the messenger's recognis- 
ances," the dramatic element belonged to the House 
of Commons, but the constitutional element remained 
with the Common Council of the city. The House 
of Commons did not prove itself master by this re- 
markable method of asserting its position. It left 
the Common Council with all the city traditions 

untouched. 

19 



290 LONDON 

It is not necessary to pursue the events more 
closely. We have recovered for observation in their 
historical setting the salient features of the great 
struggle of Georgian London against king and 
Parliament on behalf of the liberty of the subject. 
In these features we recognise the old London claim, 
we hear of Mile End as the constitutional meeting- 
place, we see the Common Hall assuming its old 
position as the grumble place of outraged citizenship. 
We see the lord mayor defending citizens' rights in 
terms which set our pulses throbbing ; we see city law 
set against state law, as we have already seen it in the 
year book of Edward II. And in these facts we have 
historical continuity involving many points of ancient 
London law and custom over which the citizens had 
struggled for a long time, and which above all things 
now supplied the modern counterparts of the ancient 
position. " We know the value and consequence," 
said the sheriffs of the city to Lord Weymouth, " of 
the citizens' right to apply immediately to the king 
and not to a third person, and we do not mean that 
any of their rights and privileges should be betrayed 
by our means." 

Looking back at the historical position of the city, 
there cannot be a doubt that there is conscious con- 
tinuity in these things. In the case noted above the 
action of the Common Hall is perhaps the most re- 
markable feature. Not for several centuries had it 
been allowed to take independent action in London's 
affairs. The first refusal of the lord mayor was in strict 



CHANGES AND REVIVAL 291 

accord with the precedent which has been already ex- 
amined. The successful effort of the Common Hall 
in obtaining their meeting was a resumption of still 
more ancient methods. At every stage we discover 
constitutional acts, not revolutionary attempts, and 
Georgian London during these events was acting in 
the spirit of Plantagenet London, with the methods 
of Norman London, in accordance with the mastery 
assumed by Anglo-Saxon London, and with formula 
and purpose derived from its position as city-state of 
the Romans. To have reached this stage through 
the phases that history has allowed us to pass is the 
greatest argument for the interpretation put upon 
past events ; and though there is nothing further to 
chronicle down to modern times, modern London 
may almost feel the throb of events which reach back 
from the eighteenth century to their beginnings in 
the fifth. 

Once again we must point out that all this struggle 
was constitutional, not factious or revolutionary. 
London has never led a revolution as Paris did. She 
decided against Charles I., but it was in support of the 
country, not initiative in the manner of a revolutionary 
city. London has ever acted constitutionally. The 
distinction is of enormous importance, for it indicates 
a permanently historical position and not a mere out- 
burst on a special occasion. There is no real dispute 
anywhere as to London's main position, only as to 
the degree to which it applies, and in this fact lies the 
strength of my main position as to continuity. In 



292 LONDON 

this last instance it was a struggle by the modern 
House of Commons, just becoming sensible of its 
own inherent democratic power, against the rights of 
the ancient city, long sensible of the value of its 
traditional custom. That such a struggle should have 
taken place — that the Common Council of London 
and the House of Commons of the nation should be 
standing up against each other on the common ground 
of constitutional liberty — is surely remarkable testi- 
mony to the strength and force of the traditional posi- 
tion of London. No other city would have entered 
into such a struggle. No other city had the right to 
make such demands. That London could and did act 
as it acted is because of its ancient independence of 
state government. It is the city as an institution 
once more putting its traditional custom into the 
practical form of constitutional action at the moment 
when constitutional action was necessary to meet 
the great emergency. Traditions such as London 
possesses are allowed, properly allowed, to sleep 
during the periods of no importance, or of small 
importance, in matters which concern it in the 
national progress, but these events show that they 
burst into vigorous life again when the occasion is 
great. The mid-seventeenth century occasion was 
great. And that London took it greatly, as part of 
its city task, is the only aspect of this memorable 
episode which it is possible for the historian to take. 

These events are paralleled in purely municipal 
events by the assertion of the city to ancient rights. 



CHANGES AND REVIVAL 293 

The parallel is not unimportant. If London acts 
greatly in great matters she is in a mood to do so in 
more domestic matters. Ceremonial functions are 
expressive, institutional functions are still more so, 
and it is well to have at least one example which will 
bear out the parallel which always arises at these 
junctures. 

A passage preserved in The Gentleman s Magazine 
of 1786 (Part I., p. 77) tells us that: "On Friday, 
13th January, the Lord Mayor, Recorder, Sheriffs, 
etc., going to St Margaret's Hill, in the Borough, to 
hold the Quarter Sessions, found Sir Joseph Mawbey 
in the chair, holding the Quarter Sessions for the 
county, and trying a prisoner for felony. The Lord 
Mayor waited patiently till the trial was over, and 
sentence passed on the prisoner to be transported to 
Africa. It was then expected that Sir Joseph would 
have resigned the chair, instead of which he was 
proceeding to other trials, which brought on a warm 
altercation between the Recorder and Sir Joseph. 
The Recorder insisted he was infringing the rights 
of the City. Sir Joseph insisted on the privilege of 
the County. The Recorder pointed out Guildford, 
Croydon, or Kingston, as the proper places for that 
business. At length Sir Joseph quitted the chair, and 
the Lord Mayor took his place." The point here 
raised was by no means insignificant. It not only 
expressed the city's claim to jurisdiction in Southwark, 
but the resumption of its claim. 

The inevitable question of expansion has now to be 



294 



LONDON 



considered. Georgian expansion differed from Stuart 
expansion in many ways. It was more defined. It 
was the period of the laying out of great estates, and 
the period of the great town-planning scheme from 
Regent's Park to Pall Mall. It was also the period 
when the beauties of the most beautiful surrounding 1 



- 




The River Fleet near Bagnigge Wells. 

country were being discovered and used by jaded 
citizen or politician. 

This latter point is interesting on its own account, 
and it has a decided influence upon the development 
of the expansion line. 

Islington is the first attraction. The Islington 
spas were apparently first opened about 1G84, for two 
curious tracts are thus entitled, A Mornings Ramble : 




O -TJ 

C/3 ° 



^ i 



CHANGES AND REVIVAL 



295 



or, Islington Wells Burlesqt, 1684, and An Ex- 
clamation from Tunbridge and Epsom against the 
New-found Wells at Islington, 1684. So late as 
1736 Islington waters were recommended. A letter, 
dated 21st April of that year, from an anxious 
father to his son in London, says : " Dr Crowe 




A View of* Pad dington Church from the Green 

thinks that if you could abide cold bathing it 
would go a great way in your cure. He has also 
a great opinion of Islington waters for your case." 1 
In 1755 was printed a curious book, entitled Isling- 
ton : or, the Humours of the New Tunbridge Wells, 
and in 1774 Islington was a watering-place, and people 
would ride there from the city to drink the waters. 2 
Hyde Park is described in the correspondence of 

1 Hist. MSS. Com., v. p. 400. 

2 Ibid., xv. (vi.) p. 274. 



296 LONDON 

1721 at Castle Howard as " so shamefully kept," 
and in such evidence we can detect why the expansion 
of London went on still further afield. Centres of 
health were sought for by those who wished still 
to remain in touch with London. Lady Lechmere 
stayed at Greenwich, and was " mighty fond of that 
place." She is described as being at Paddington in 
1733, " for the air, having been out of order of late " ; 
and a little later on in the same year, " Lady Lechmere 
not recovering so fast as I could wish, I have taken a 
lodging for her at Turnham Green and she proposes 
going there this week, Sir John Shadwell, her 
physician, assuring me country air, gentle exercise, 
and a regular diet would soon set her in a fair way 
of recovery." 1 

The Earl of Burlington built his seat at Chiswick, 
still in existence as a London suburban residence of 
the Duke of Devonshire, and celebrated as the death- 
place of both Canning and Fox and the meeting- 
place of many statesmen on great occasions. The 
king in 1827 altered Buckingham House into Buck- 
ingham Palace, and altered it to please no contem- 
porary authority and no succeeding authority. The 
wonderful marble arch entrance to the palace remained 
until it was recognised as too stupid for this purpose ; 
it was then removed to Hyde Park, to become an 
unsightly blot in its new position, and now remains 
stupidly in the middle of converging roads to fulfil 
no purpose of any kind. 

1 Hist. MSS. Com., xv. (vi.) pp. 35, 54, 99, 107. 



CHANGES AND REVIVAL 



297 



Such foolishness as this, however, did not mark 
every Georgian scheme, for the great Regency scheme 
of town-planning will ever remain as a prominent and 
beautiful example of the possibilities of London. It 
provided for its future as well as its own present, and 
we of this age can appreciate the extent of the debt 





: ?$K "Mil TEH' 
Buckingham Palace about 1820. 

of London for this great scheme when it is compared 
with the miserable littleness of nearly all later 
schemes. I am claiming this scheme for Georgian 
London. It is eminently a part of it, typical of it, 
typical of the best part of it, and the scheme itself 
is a remarkable instance of broad-minded and far- 
seeing policy in town-planning, at a time when town- 
planning, as a science, was undreamed of. It is well 
worth relating in detail, for it is a story to be proud of, 
and it begins by the recognition of precisely the same 



298 LONDON 

principle which we have noted was wisely advocated 
in Parliament when the rebuilding of London after 
the Fire was being considered, and it was a Govern- 
ment official who formulated this principle. 

In 1793 the Surveyor-General of Crown Lands 
directed the attention of the Treasury to the oppor- 
tunity which would be afforded, upon the expiration 
of the leases of the Marylebone Park estate, for 
laying-out the estate in an elegant manner, thereby at 
one and the same time increasing the Crown revenue 
and adding to the public amenities of the neighbour- 
hood. The estate, which was formerly the outer 
park attached to the royal mansion of Henry VIII. 
at Marylebone, and comprised 543 acres, was let on 
leases expiring in 1803 and 1811, the greater part 
being held by the Duke of Portland. The Treasury 
took the matter up, and offered a premium of £1000 
for the best design for laying-out the estate, but after 
waiting some years the Commissioners of Woods and 
Forests reported that architects would not bestow 
their time nor risk their reputation in competitions 
of the kind, and only three plans, all by the same 
person, 1 were received. The Commissioners accord- 
ingly fell back upon the departmental architects, and 
in 1810 instructed Mr Leverton and Mr Chowne of 
the Land Revenue Department, and Mr John Nash 
of the Department of Woods, to submit schemes for 

1 A Mr John White, the agent of the Duke of Portland for the 
portion of the Marylebone Park estate held by him. This Mr 
White vigorously opposed the scheme finally adopted. 




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CHANGES AND REVIVAL 299 

the development of the estate. The scheme sub- 
mitted by the former proposed to lay out two-thirds 
of the ground in streets and squares upon the lines 
of the neighbouring Bedford, Portland, and Portman 
estates, and to let the remaining one-third for villas 
with gardens or for nurseries. Mr Nash's plan was 
formed on a different and greater view of the subject. 
His proposal was to create another Hyde Park in 
the growing district of St Marylebone, with squares, 
circuses, and crescents in the best style of architecture. 
The Park, of between 200 and 300 acres, was to 
form the centre-piece, and the villas, with extensive 
shrubberies annexed, were to be grouped round, the 
whole being girded with an external ride or drive. 
In the valley within the Park a large ornamental 
piece of water was to be formed, and a chain of 
markets was to be established on the eastern side. 
Mr Nash's scheme, which was urged would be an 
antidote to the extensive speculative building then 
going on in the locality, was adopted practically in its 
entirety, the principal alterations being due to the 
Government's decision to allow greater open space 
and fewer buildings. 

Intimately bound up with the Park scheme were 
two other proposals — (1) the construction of a canal 
through the northern portion of the Park, and (2) the 
provision of better means of access from the Park to 
the West End. The canal was to be a continuation 
of the Grand Junction Canal from Paddington, to 
unite with the Thames at Limehouse ; and, in support 



300 LONDON 

of what might have appeared to be the intrusion 
of an essentially commercial undertaking into a high- 
class estate, the promoters pointed out the advantage 
of having a supply of water for the ornamental lake, 
and ready water conveyance to the barracks and 
markets to be erected on the eastern side. Nash, in his 
first plan, designed the canal, of a length and breadth 
equal to that in St James's Park, to pass through the 
upper part of the Park. The sides were to form three 
terraces or public promenades — " a grand, a novel 
feature in the Metropolis." The Commissioners, 
however, would not agree to this encroachment on 
the Park, and the canal was relegated (to Nash's dis- 
appointment, it would appear, and at heavy loss to 
the Company) to the outer circle, with a collateral 
cut or basin reaching down by Albany Street. 

The laying-out of the Park estate necessitated new 
means of communication with the west and north- 
west quarters of London. The only convenient 
communication from Pall Mall and Charing Cross 
to St Marylebone at that time was by means of Bond 
Street. In Bond Street were then concentrated all 
the West End fashionable shops, and the congestion 
of traffic therein was becoming unbearable. In Messrs 
Leverton and Chowne's scheme, a new street, 70 feet 
wide and practically in a straight line, was to be cut 
through from Oxford Street through Piccadilly to 
the top of the Haymarket and so to the east end of 
Pall Mall. Mr Nash proposed a street beginning at 
Charing Cross and terminating at Portland Place. 



CHANGES AND REVIVAL 301 

Pall Mall was to be continued eastwards to meet the 
Haymarket. From Carlton House the new street 
was to go at right angles with Pall Mall into 
Piccadilly. A circus was to be formed at Piccadilly, 
and just north of the circus a square, with a public 
building in the centre, was placed. The street then 
ran from the western corner of the square in a slightly 
oblique direction to Oxford Street (where another 
circus was formed), and was continued north in a 
straight line to meet Portland Place. Portland Place, 
then the widest street in London (100 feet), was taken 
as the model for the breadth of the street throughout 
its entire length, except at the lower end near Pall 
Mall, where it was 200 feet. In the light of recent 
discussions as to the form of rebuilding Regent Street, 
it is interesting to note that Nash designed colonnades 
to cover the whole of the pavements in the streets 
from Pall Mall to Oxford Street. One advantage 
urged was that the tops of the colonnades would form 
balconies to the lodging-rooms over the shops, from 
which the occupiers would survey the gay scenes and 
so " induce single men, and others who only visit 
town occasionally, to give a preference to such lodg- 
ings." Criticisms as to colonnades being dark and 
gloomy and liable to misuse were met by Nash. 

It will be observed that Nash's plan did not contain 
the famous Quadrant. He designed the square, so as 
to avoid purchasing property in Golden Square. The 
Treasury, in April 1813, approved Nash's scheme, 
subject to the square north of Piccadilly Circus being 



302 



LONDON 







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SJPTF 



s f itp3 m 



sft 






Regent Street — ' ' Plan of proposed new street from Charing Cross to Portland 

Place," 1813. 



CHANGES AND REVIVAL 303 

altered to a curve, and to a further curve being intro- 
duced north of Oxford Circus. This latter curve was 
introduced partly to shorten the long vista down 
Portland Place, and partly to avoid some expensive 
property belonging to Earl St Vincent. In addition 
Pall Mall East was to be continued as far as St 
Martin's Church, and the approach from Cockspur 
Street improved. Nash had suggested that a square 
or crescent might be formed at Charing Cross, but 
this was not included in the scheme, Trafalgar Square 
coming twenty years later. 

The Act authorising the improvement received 
royal assent in July 1813, and the carrying of it out 
was promptly commenced. By 1816 the external 
drive and the roads, fences, and plantations had all 
been completed, the bed of the ornamental water had 
been excavated, and so much of the canal as passed 
through the estate was finished. Building operations 
were, however, slow, the lots remained on hand much 
longer than had been anticipated, and the Com- 
missioners of Woods and Forests had to resort to 
farming operations to bring in revenue. In one 
portion of the estate potatoes were raised between the 
avenues of trees, but with little pecuniary return. 
Another venture — the sowing of 9^ acres with a new 
root, the mangel-wurzel — was a great success, over 
£600 net profit being realised in 1815. By 1819 but 
little progress had been made, on account of the 
failure of the builder who had taken up certain plots ; 
but by 1823 considerable lettings had been effected, 



304 LONDON 

and the buildings on the south and east side began to 
spring up. Within the next three years there was a 
great demand for sites, and most of the scheme, as 
contemplated by Nash, was well on its way to com- 
pletion. Alterations were, however, made in the 
direction of lessening buildings within the Park. 
Thus, in the centre of the Park, on what is now known 
as the inner circle, it was proposed to erect inner 
external circuses of houses, in the centres of which 
the designer suggested a public building should be 
placed to receive the statues and monuments of 
distinguished men. This proposal was abandoned 
in 1826, when it was also decided to leave open 
the northern boundary of the Park. The cost of 
acquiring the property required, and forming sewers 
and pavements, proved far greater than had been 
anticipated, and the land revenue of the Crown was 
largely absorbed for some years in meeting the 
liabilities of the scheme. By 1819, £1,000,000 had 
been expended. The street was then completed from 
Piccadilly to Pall Mall, and there was a good demand 
for building plots. By 1823, sites bringing in a 
yearly rental of £34,500 had been let. The total cost 
of the work was £1,533,000, and the rentals now 
receivable fully justify the view taken of the method 
and principle of improving an urban estate. The 
whole story is worth being told, if only as a lesson to 
modern London- — to the Government departments 
which arrange petty one-sided improvements ; to the 
municipal authorities who are content to improve 



CHANGES AND REVIVAL 305 

London by feet and inches instead of by outlet roads 
capable of meeting the traffic ; and to estate owners 
who do not appreciate that free and open access to 
their property, whether residential or business, is an 
absolute necessity for the increasing of site values. 
Londoners will appreciate the story by a just under- 
standing of the relief the scheme has given to the 




Regent Street in 1827. 

requirements of to-day. There is indeed no aspect 

of it which does not lead to the contemplation of 

what a great London may mean. 

There has been nothing quite so extensive and 

useful since. The great scheme of Kingsway and 

Aldwych is the nearest, with its bold running of a 

tramway from the Embankment under the Strand 

and connecting north and south London. But 

Kingsway and Aldwych stop short at Holborn and 

do not follow the parallel Regent Street scheme by 

20 



306 LONDON 

penetrating at least to the Euston Road. Other 
schemes, the East and West India Dock Road, the 
Whitechapel Road, have proved useful in a limited 
way instead of extremely valuable in a great way, 
and thus London proceeds with its expansions, with- 
out ideals and without effective practical results. 

A remarkable feature of the expansion of Georgian 
London comes from quite a different source, namely, 
the development of the great estates. This has given 
us one of the most beautiful features of modern 
London, namely, the squares as they are called. The 
Bedford, Grosvenor, Cadogan, Portman, Camden, and 
other estates were laid out in no mean fashion. There 
was no cramping, and there was design, with the 
result that throughout London this method has been 
to an extent adopted, and has given to London no 
less than three hundred and sixty-three of these 
beautiful islets of green amidst the acreage of bricks. 

The oldest square in London is St James's, which 
was authorised by an Act of 1725 ; then follow 
Charterhouse Square in 1742, Golden Square in 1750, 
Grosvenor Square in 1774, Hoxton Square in 1777, 
the Bedfordbury Squares in 1799 and succeeding 
years, Edwardes Square, Kensington, in 1819, the 
remainder following on at intervals. Every one of 
these squares has an interesting history. Statesmen 
have resided there, political actions of the greatest 
importance have been discussed and decided in 
dining-rooms and studies of houses in these squares, 
tragedies have been enacted, lives have been spent 



CHANGES AND REVIVAL 307 

in the making of historical events of the greatest 
moment to the nation. But even the accumulated 
history, if it could be written, would not equal one 
great factor which appears in the original system of 
control conferred by the wisdom of Parliament upon 
the inhabitants of squares. They are governed by 
a series of remarkable private statutes. Thus the 
Southampton Estate Act of 1801 places in the hands 
of commissioners not only all the powers of paving, 
lighting, cleansing, watering which were necessary, in- 
cluding the sinking of wells for the supply of water — 
a feature which is still preserved in Berkeley Square 
— but also the duty of appointing " such number of 
watchmen and patroles " as they shall think fit, and 
providing "them with proper arms, ammunition, 
weapons, clothing, for the discharge of their duty," 
the cost of which services was to be met by the levy 
of a rate upon the inhabitants. These surely are 
remarkable provisions. They set up islands of 
government endowed with powers which were hardly 
possessed by duly constituted municipal authorities, 
and the question at once arises whether the great 
power of an armed constabulary was demanded by 
the condition of things in London at the beginning 
of the nineteenth century, or whether it was the 
demand which property made as the price of its 
development. We need not seek an answer to this 
question too closely, for we shall find it among the 
conditions which accompanied the expansion and 
growth of London. 



308 LONDON 

Expansions from the centre did not lead to im- 
provements in the centre, and there are several 
examples of the bad conditions which gradually were 
allowed to exist. 

One element in the bad conditions is most serious. 
In 1729 private correspondence describes London 
as " a kind of mistress dissolute in principle, loose in 
practice, and extravagant in pleasure " ; and later on 
we have George Selwyn writing to Lord Carlisle in 
1775 (3rd August), from Almack's, that " it is dreadful 
the increase of violence and audaciousness of robberies 
in London, and for many miles about at this time. 
I am much more struck with the terror of these 
insurgents than with any at a greater distance, and 
should be heartily glad that every ounce of silver 
plate was immediately melted down throughout the 
kingdom towards raising a marcchausse for our 
defence and supporting a better police." A little 
later on in the same year he again writes on this 
subject : " Not only the environs of this town, but 
all the little bye-lanes and avenues to it, are filled 
with footpads and highwaymen." 1 

Bad roads helped towards such conditions. A 
Trip through London, a famous book, which in 1728 
reached a fifth edition, gives us a lamentable picture 
of the streets about the Houses of Parliament : 
" That I may be regular in my complaints of all 
publick and private nuisances I shall exhibit a bill 
against the streets and Highways of the city and 
1 Hist. MSS. Com., vol. xv. (vi.) pp. 57, 283, 290. 



CHANGES AND REVIVAL 309 

liberty of Westminster. Every avenue is guarded 
by a turnpike, whereby large sums of money are 
annually raised for their repair, and the inhabitants 
are not without apprehensions of seeing turnpikes 
upon the Thames upon another year ; yet the streets 
and passages leading to both houses of parliament 
are in such great disorder that I have known those 
members who have pass'd thither in their coaches so 
toss'd and jumbled about that it has been near an 
hour e'er they could recover the use of their limbs and 
proceed to business. A commoner once being over- 
turned in his chariot in King's Street went immediately 
to the House and in very lively terms remonstrated 
against the badness of the ways. Another member 
opposed the motion, urging that as the publick 
companies for raising water were continually laying 
down pipes a bill for repairs of the streets would prove 
to little or no purpose." 

This is only a reflection from earlier conditions as 
described in that curious satire entitled Sorbiei^es 
Journey to London in 1698, when it states that "the 
Gutters are deep and laid with rough edges which make 
the coaches not to glide easily over 'em, but occasion 
an employment for an industrious sort of people 
call'd Kennel-Rakers." 

The indictment against the turnpikes is complete — 
there will be "turnpikes upon the Thames another 
year," and the Commons House of Parliament 
solemnly debates the conditions of the road ap- 
proaches to its own chamber. City government 



310 LONDON 

in London was destroyed by the methods and con- 
ditions of expansion, and the signs of destruction are 
worse than anything we have previously encountered. 

This is the last record we are going to have of this 
unregulated expansion. The record is not creditable 
to a city having the history and traditions of London, 
nor to a government which conceived and carried 
out the great Regency scheme. If Parliament had 
not quite realised its duty to or its relationship to 
London, London had a very distinct idea of its own 
position in the past, and therefore of its claims upon 
Parliament. Neither corporation nor Parliament 
acted, and the inheritance of such inaction has pressed 
with terrible force upon modern London. 

In spite of this, however, the great fact from this 
period does not rest entirely upon the note of despair, 
but on that of hope. One cannot doubt that Georgian 
London took its strong action against Parliament 
because of its ancient independence, its ancient con- 
trolling force, its sense of historical continuity. That 
there is no coming back to this point in our story of 
continuity makes the importance of it all the greater. 
It is the point where we leave ancient London and 
its continuity of aim and ideal for the new London of 
to-day without aim and without ideal. But if aim 
and ideal come back to London it will gladly look 
upon the events of its Georgian period, uneven though 
they are, as the point of contact from which the 
continuity of history may once more be taken up. 



CHAPTER XI 

GROWTH 

Expansion has hitherto been limited in area and 
occasional rather than continuous. We now come 
definitely to an expansion which has made London, 
with its suburbs, the largest city community in the 
world. It has grown from its small area of one 
square mile, the largest Roman city in Britain, to 
the immense county area of one hundred and twenty 
square miles, and it is growing beyond this boundary. 
The various estate Acts afford the first most effec- 
tive evidence as to how this expansion has taken 
place, and the maps of London allow the stages to 
be set out with precision. There are eight different 
periods of extension — from the city walls to the first 
extension up to 1658, from 1658 to 1668, thence to 
1745, thence to 1799, thence to 1832, then the 1832 
extension, next from 1832 to 1852, and finally from 
1862 to 1887. Thus is shown the ever- widening area 
creeping along the highways, and gradually filling in 
the backs until at last the monster city, as it is called, 
has become one vast extent of bricks and mortar with 
little, if any, architectural purpose or design, with 
unlovely houses in unlovely streets — a city spoiled of 

311 



312 LONDON 

its natural beauty and delight by the unthinking 
minds of the modern Englishman. 

It is curious that no direct record of the destruc- 
tion of the city wall exists. It went slowly, not 
effectually to make a feature of the newer London. 
It appears in perfect order in Jeffery's Plan of 
London, 1735, and had disappeared from the maps 
when Rocque published his map in 1746. Active 
destruction went on about this period. Acts of 
Parliament were passed for improving the city, and 
there is an ominous list of " openings to be made 
in the City of London pursuant to an Act of 
Parliament passed this last session," printed in The 
Gentleman s Magazine for 1760, and nearly all 
relating" to the wall. This Act was that of 33 
Geo. II., cap. 30, and its title sets forth its object: 
" An Act for widening certain streets, lanes, and 
passages within the City of London, and liberties 
thereof, and for opening certain new streets and 
ways within the same, and for other purposes there- 
in mentioned." 

The first extension is along the river-bank to 
Westminster on the north and Southwark on the 
south, showing the river to have been the principal 
highway of the city. The next extension, just after 
the fire, is north of the city area towards Old Street. 
Three-quarters of a century later (1745) we get a 
great extension all round up to Hyde Park on the 
west, just north of Oxford Street, Theobald's Road, 
and Old Street on the north, to Whitechapel and 



GROWTH 313 

Limehouse on the east. Another fifty years (1799) 
we have a further fringe of narrow dimensions pene- 
trating to Knightsbridge on the west, creeping up 
Edgware Road, taking in the southern part of Maryle- 
bone, extending to Camden Town, adding to the 
1745 extension in the east a narrow belt all round, 
and finally showing the first great extension in North 
Lambeth along the banks of the river. In 1832 the 
Regent's Park district on the north, a large district of 
Lambeth on the south, and a further extension of 
Bermondsey and South wark are the principle features. 
Islington, St Pancras, Shoreditch, Bethnal Green, 
and Mile End also filled up at this date, together 
with a little bit of Greenwich. In 1862 the great 
era of building set in, and all round the boundary of 
the 1832 limits we have great extensions. The next 
stage is 1887, which again shows an extension of the 
building area all round the map ; and now, twenty 
years later, we have scarcely any boundary of London 
left, for building has gone on spreading into Kent, 
Surrey, Middlesex, and Essex at a pace which almost 
defies the cartographer. 

There are several obvious effects from this con- 
tinual extension of the building line, but it also 
resulted in a reconstruction of underground London 
by the conversion of the ancient streams of London 
into sewers. Thus the King's Scholars' Pond sewer 
was so called because it emptied itself into the 
Thames at the King's Scholars' Pond (near the pre- 
sent Vauxhall Bridge), on " the great level extending 



314 LONDON 

from the Horse Ferry to Chelsey Mead.'' Incident- 
ally it may be mentioned that during the reign of 
Queen Anne the name of the sewer was dutifully 
changed to Queen's Scholars' Pond sewer. Anciently 
it was known as the Tyburn brook, and later as the 
Aye brook, and flowed down the hill from Marylebone 
Fields, passing near the old village of Tyburn and 
across the Acton or Tyburn road (Oxford Street) and 
the present Brook Street, through Mayfair to the 
Stone Bridge, situated at the " dip " in modern 
Piccadilly. Passing under the bridge and the high 
road to Kensington, it entered what is now known 
as the Green Park. Large ponds were formed in 
the course of the sewer in this part of the park. At 
the bottom of the hill the streamlet passed through 
the gardens of Goring or Arlington House, where 
Buckingham Palace now stands, and along by the 
"coach road to Chelsea" — the present Buckingham 
Palace Road — and what is now Vauxhall Bridge 
Road to the river. At different periods the stream 
was altered in various parts of its course, and gradually 
covered in and converted into an underground sewer. 
There were other small tributaries of the Thames 
which became in course of time underground sewers. 
One was the Bayswater brook, or West Bourne, 
which became the important Ranelagh Sewer, and 
part of which was utilised to form the Serpentine. 
A glance at the map of the original winding course 
of this stream will easily explain the origin of the 
name " Serpentine." Further west was the Counter's 



GROWTH 315 

Creek, with its tributary, the Stinking Ditch. The 
Ravensbourne and the Wandle are the last of the 
ancient streams of London. 

It is idle to say that this growth and its accompany- 
ing circumstances have had any meaning for states- 
men and political philosophers. It has been ignored 
for so long, has been allowed to proceed without 
direction and without control, has brought with it 
such immeasurable wrongs, that it has almost become 
an accepted truism that London cannot be organised 
into a civic unit. Like other apparent truisms this 
one is false, and the degree to which its falsity extends 
may best be understood by the conditions of life 
which attended the phenomenal growth of our great 
city. Pride in such a growth is reasonable enough 
if it had been accompanied by great ideas of what 
London was growing into. It is immensely pitiful 
when we know the facts. Full details of the facts 
cannot be given, for they would fill a volume, but 
as illustrations I will quote from official reports 
examples which are by no means peculiar to one part 
of London. 

An official report of 1849 contains the following 
description of Hammersmith : 

" Brook Green on its western side contained an 
open ditch, wide, stagnant, and with a large accumula- 
tion of foul deposit, receiving the drainage of most of 
the houses in its vicinity, and of a foul and pestilential 
ditch at the rear of several cottages in Slater's Build- 
ings, running, in a covered sewer, across the main 



316 LONDON 

road, thence open, taking a very circuitous course 
through market-gardens to its outfall in the Thames, 
near Burlington Gardens, polluting with its exhala- 
tions the atmosphere throughout its entire course. 

" Various blocks of houses at Brook Green drain 
into this ditch by open ditches. In these the foul 
deposit is on a level with the floors of the houses, the 
main ditch not affording a sufncent outfall for the 
discharge of the foul and fcetid matter, which has 
largely accumulated and emits highly offensive 
emanations. 

" Proceeding more into the heart of Hammer- 
smith, and nearer the southern boundary, as a further 
illustration of the nature of its drainage, is a foul 
open ditch having its origin from a covered drain in 
the main road near the Nag's Head public-house ; 
thence running westward past the Angel Inn, in a 
covered drain ; thence turning from the main street, 
resuming its open and offensive condition, through 
the yards at the rear of the houses on the south-side 
of Little George Street, receiving in its course the 
privies on its banks attached to some eighteen or 
twenty houses. 

" The ditch throughout is in an excessively filthy 
condition ; but in this portion there is a much larger 
accumulation of filth, and a proportionate increase of 
the noxious effluvium. 

" The tidal water flows up this ditch, driving before 
it the foul accumulations ; these are left by the 
receding tide in the upper part nearest the houses, 



GROWTH 317 

and in the covered drain in the main road, exposing 
fresh surfaces of filth to active decomposition." 

The district of the Potteries in North Kensington 
was similarly situated. 

" On the north, east, and west sides this locality is 
skirted by open ditches, some of them of the most 
foul and pestilential character, filled with the accumu- 
lations from the extensive piggeries attached to most 
of the houses. Intersecting in various parts, and 
discharging into the ditches on the north and west, 
are many smaller but still more offensive open 
ditches, some skirting houses, the bedroom windows 
of which open over them ; some running in the rear 
and fronts of houses, others at the sides and through 
the middle of the streets and alleys, loading the 
atmosphere throughout their course with their 
pestilential exhalations. 

" The streets are unpaved and full of ruts, the sur- 
face is strewn with refuse of almost every conceivable 
description ; they are at times wholly impassable. 
At all seasons they are in a most offensive and 
disgusting condition, emitting effluvia of the most 
nauseous character. 

" The majority of the houses are of a most wretched 
class, many being mere hovels in a ruinous condition, 
and are generally densely populated ; they are filthy 
in the extreme, and contain vast accumulations of 
garbage and offal, the small gardens attached to 
some being purposely raised by this to a greater 
height." 



318 LONDON 

At St Giles the conditions were even worse as 
they are described in the official report : 

" The houses described on the accompanying plan 
comprise Church lane and Carrier street, Fletcher's 
court, Kennedy court, Walsh's court, Hampshire 
Hog yard, &c, in the parish of Saint Giles, and form 
the remnant of that mass of buildings commonly 
called the ' Rookery,' recently taken down for the 
formation of New Oxford street. The property on 
the north of Church lane belongs to the executors 
of Col. Buckridge, and that on the south to Sir John 
Hanmer. It is the resort of the most depraved and 
filthy class of the community. 

" Much might be said of the inconveniences and in- 
sufficient accommodation under which the multitudes 
suffer who are obliged to occupy these houses ; for 
common necessaries of health, water supply, and the 
use of privies, they have to pay indirectly by excessive 
prices on articles of consumption, which are sold at 
the places where these are to be obtained. These 
pumps and necessaries are generally locked up after 
a certain hour in the morning. Many of the houses 
originally had privies, but they have been destroyed 
by the sub-landlords for the purpose of avoiding the 
enormous periodical cost of emptying the cesspools. 
An obvious consequence of this scarcity of conveni- 
ence is, that the surface channels of the streets, 
passages, and courts are the receptacles for refuse and 
excreta, and the occasional sweeping in the middle 
of the day produces the most prejudicial effect upon 



GROWTH 319 

the atmosphere." And then comes the touch of 
economic cynicism : " This property is considered of 
the most lucrative description. Two or three houses 
are underlet to a lessee for a term of years, at about 
20/. per annum ; he underlets the property house by 
house at about 35/. per annum ; these are again let 
out in rooms at a still greater remunerative rent ; and 
lastly, the separate beds in rooms are underlet to 
vagrants, tramps, and the refuse of society, at about 
3d. per night ; producing, after deducting rates, taxes, 
and losses, about 70/. per house per annum." 

In January 1847 a Report was prepared by a 
Committee of the Statistical Society of London in 
reference to this place, which confirms the official 
report of two years later. The following is an 
extract : 

" Your Committee have thus given a picture in 
detail of human wretchedness, filth, and brutal 
degradation, the chief features of which are a disgrace 
to a civilised country, and which your Committee 
have reason to fear, from letters that have appeared 
in the public journals, is but the type of the miser- 
able condition of masses of the community, whether 
located in the small, ill-ventilated rooms of manu- 
facturing towns, or in many of the cottages of the 
agricultural peasantry. In these wretched dwellings 
all ages and both sexes, fathers and daughters, 
mothers and sons, grown-up brothers and sisters, 
stranger-adult males and females, and swarms of 
children, the sick, the dying, and the dead, are herded 



320 LONDON 

together with a proximity and mutual pressure which 
brutes would resist." 

That these sort of things were not quickly mended 
is proved from the evidence given by the Earl of 
Shaftesbury before the Royal Commission on the 
Housing of the Working Classes, from which the 
following extracts are quoted : 

" When they began [about 1857] to pull down 
parts of the houses in Tyndall's-buildings, Gray's- Inn- 
road, the swarms of vermin were so great that . . . 
the workmen, accustomed to that sort of thing, struck 
work . . . until fire-engines had been introduced 
charged with water that destroyed these animals." 
(Question 25.) 

" Formerly there were a great many long alleys, 
and when I used to go into them if I stretched out 
my arms I struck the walls on both sides. ... In 
these alleys lived from 200 to 300 people, and there 
was but one accommodation for the whole of that 
number, and that at the end ; . . . one could not 
even approach that end. . . . We could not possibly 
go into the rooms at the bottom of the alley, but we 
were obliged to speak to the people through the 
windows above." (Question 31.) 

" The air was dreadfully foul. The sun could not 
penetrate, and there never was any ventilation." 
(Question 32.) 

" Frying-pan-alley, Holborn, was very narrow, the 
only necessary accommodation being at the end. In 
the first house that I turned into there was a single 



GROWTH 321 

room ; the window was very small, and the light 
came through the door. I saw a young woman there. 
. . . ' Look there,' said she, ' at that great hole ; the 
landlord will not mend it ; I have every night 
to sit up and watch, or my husband sits up to 
watch, because that hole is over a common sewer, 
and the rats come up, sometimes twenty at a time, 
and if we did not watch for them they would 
eat the baby up.' . . . That could not exist now." 
(Question 36.) 

" I went into a low cellar [in Tyndall's-buildings]. 
. . . There were a woman and two children there. . . . 
From a hole in the ceiling there came a long open 
wooden tube supported by props, and from that 
flowed all the filth of the house above, right through 
the place where this woman was living, into the 
common sewer. ... I believe much of that sort of 
thing occurred in London which could not occur now. 
Again, in another place I had heard that there were 
people living over cesspools. . . . We went there, 
and in the room there was boarding upon the floor ; 
upon that boarding were living a woman and three 
children. We lifted up the boarding and there was 
the open cesspool . . . not one foot below the surface 
of the room. ... It took an hour to clean by means 
of the machine." (Question 37.) 

" They go into these tenement houses ; they remain 

there a couple of months or three months ; they go 

out again, and are succeeded by another family ; they 

leave all their filth. . . . The other family come in, 

21 



322 LONDON 

stay three months, and deposit their filth and off they 
go/' (Question 39.) 

" There was a famous place called Bermondsey 
Island. ... It was a large swamp ; a number of 
people lived there ... in houses built upon piles [in 
about 1864]. ... So bad was the supply of water 
there that I have positively seen the women dip their 
buckets into the water over which they were living, 
and in which was deposited all the filth of the place, 
that being the only water that they had for every pur- 
pose — washing, drinking, and so on." (Question 141.) 

" In the old times the water was supplied some- 
times only once a week, and at other times twice a 
week. . . . The water lasted for 20 or 25 minutes. 
. . . Many of them had to take it home and put it 
under their beds, where it inhaled all the noxious 
atmosphere." (Question 175.) 

Does anyone study that terrible revelation of the 
real London — the massive substratum of London life, 
in Mr Charles Booth's seventeen volumes, Life and 
Labour of the People of London ? The figures will 
become obsolete as time makes them into history, 
and ten years have already passed since they were 
published, but the facts will remain ; and when the 
history of modern civilisation comes to be written, the 
glory and the sunshine, the science and the discovery, 
the conquest of the whole world for the purpose of its 
economic products, will not efface the histories of 
such human units as London. The effects of ex- 
cessive rents in the shrinkage of accommodation 



GROWTH 323 

and the consequent overcrowding, together with the 
enormous area of real poverty, make up a London 
which it does not do to dwell upon when one is 
engaged upon seeking out its story of continuity. 
Tottenham Court Road, St Giles, and Soho have 
ceased to be historical areas when they contain 
merely the victims of rack-renting, with a home life 
shrunken into the horrible classification of overcrowd- 
ing. The poverty areas, once charming spots of 
London extensions, are now closed to all except those 
who herd there— St James Westminster, St Saviour's, 
Old Street, and South Shoreditch being the worst 
districts. And as we go round the map, making 
comparisons between district and district, between 
poverty area and poverty area, we are met with " a 
picture of expansion in all directions following lines 
and laws so definite as to provide a stable basis for 
action and to remove all excuse for want of prepara- 
tion." 1 These are Mr Booth's words — the words of 
a statistical historian ; and though perhaps London 
does not now contain the hideous details which 
Lord Shaftesbury depicted, the fact remains that 
we arrive merely at " a stable basis for action " and 
not at action itself. 

If one could suggest that this evidence was 
exaggerated or untrue, even if it only related to 
isolated cases, it would have been possible to ignore 
it. Unfortunately, as it stands it is the other side to 
the picture of London's growth — that portion of the 

1 Final volume, p. 15. 



324 LONDON 

picture which has deprived London of its natural 
inheritance, and even now links it up with a great 
mileage of mean streets instead of with broad and 
stately avenues leading to the distances beyond, linked 
together by every convenience which citizenship has 
the right to command. 

The reason is not far to seek. The appropriation 
of legislative power by the state, the result of 
modern political thought, has produced complete 
definiteness in the state and indefiniteness in the 
cities. And there is no clearing away of this indefi- 
niteness. We have seen the converse of this state 
of things under Plantagenet rule and the lessons it 
taught to London. We see now the position to 
which London has been brought. It has never 
been endowed for its greater position among cities 
with its proper government, and for a long time had 
no government of any kind. This indictment is 
proved in many ways. It was proved to the House 
of Commons in 1855 when an attempt, a fatal attempt, 
was made to give it an experimental form of govern- 
ment. Sir Benjamin Hall summarised the position 
in the following terms : 

" It had a population of 2,233,108 ; number of 
inhabited houses 291,240; rateable value £9,011,230, 
exclusive of the city of London. The number of 
different local acts in force in the metropolis was 
about 250, independent of public general acts, ad- 
ministered by not less than 300 different bodies ; 137 
of these had returned the numbers comprising these 



GROWTH 325 

bodies, and they amounted to 4738 persons. From 
the other boards there was not any return ; but taking 
the same average for them, there would be 5710 
more persons ; so that upon that computation the 
whole metropolis was governed by no less than 10,448 
Commissioners. Besides these there were the follow- 
ing chartered bodies : Lincoln's Inn, Staple Inn, 
New Inn, Gray's Inn, Furnival's Inn, Charterhouse. 
There were thirty parishes containing 880,000 in- 
habitants, and assessed to real property, in 1843, at 
£3,900,000, which might probably amount to much 
more than £4,000,000 at the present time ; con- 
sequently they represented nearly one half of the 
whole value of the metropolis. On examination it 
appeared that these parishes were, each of them, 
governed either wholly, or in part, by Commissioners 
or trustees, who were self-elected, or elected for life, 
or both, and therefore in no degree responsible to the 
ratepayers. The House would naturally ask why all 
these evils had continued for so long a period of 
time, and no steps been taken to remedy them. 
Take the case of St Pancras, one of the greatest 
instances of abuses that had ever existed in a civilised 
country. In the year 1834 these parties came to 
Parliament through their vestry. They desired their 
vestry to expend money for the purpose of remedying 
these abuses. The Bill was thrown out in the second 
reading. In 1837 a similar attempt was made with 
similar results, but at a heavy cost to the ratepayers. 
In the year 1851 they were more fortunate. He pro- 



326 LONDON 

posed a Bill which was referred to a Select Committee. 
It passed through the Committee and was sent up to 
the House of Lords, where it was thrown out ; and 
from that time to the present no step had been taken, 
and no step would be taken, to remedy these abuses, 
because they spent £4000 on the former occasion, 
and the paving boards, over which they had no control, 
spent nearly £3000 in defeating the ratepayers, which 
the ratepayers had likewise to pay. There were two 
other boards in the metropolis which had great powers 
of taxation, over which the ratepayers had no control. 
One of these bodies consisted of the officers appointed 
under the Metropolitan Buildings Act of 1844, and 
the other body was the Commission of Sewers. The 
officers appointed under the Metropolitan Buildings 
Act consisted of a registrar appointed by the Chief 
Commissioner of Works, at a salary of £1000 ; an 
official referee, at a salary of £1000 ; and other 
referees and officers, at salaries making a total of 
£5510, who were paid partly out of the Consolidated 
Fund and partly out of the County rate. Besides 
these, there are fifty-two surveyors appointed by the 
magistrates in quarter sessions. They have incomes 
varying from £200 to £1600 per annum, derived from 
fees, and the total amount received by them in 1853 
was no less than £24,364 ; so that the cost of this 
establishment to the country and to the ratepayers 
was just £30,000 per annum, over which there was 
no control whatever." 1 

1 Hansard's Debates, l6th March 1855. 



GROWTH 327 

At the beginning of this study we were dealing 
with the conditions of a city-state, the central institu- 
tion of both Greek and Roman civilisation, to which 
London owed its origin. At the end we are dealing 
with the city-institution of London, which is evolved 
from the wreck of its older life, and which has to 
face the new conceptions of city life. We find it to 
be a place of great needs, of stupendous requirements, 
not of satisfied desires. It looks out into the future, 
and pauses with halting hopes when it realises what 
that future needs. On the banks of its noble river ; 
on the pavements of its crowded thoroughfares ; in 
the homes of its working population ; in the breath- 
ing-spaces which have been preserved in odd corners 
of its territory ; in its many underground structures 
for drainage, for conveyance, for water supply, and 
for means of telegraphic communication ; in its 
centres of historic associations — everywhere the 
absence of the master-mind of organisation is pain- 
fully apparent, and London pauses in its hopes to 
ask what is to take place if all its present needs are 
to be dealt with as its past needs have been. Royal 
Commissions and Select Committees have made 
recommendations over and over again, and they 
remain recommendations still. A dreary catalogue 
they make — a catalogue from which it is hardly 
possible to draw an inspiration. 

Inspiration does not readily flow from such sources, 
and there is plenty of evidence to show that it has not 
flown. This is best illustrated by the present condi- 



328 LONDON 

tion of London government. It apparently needs 3997 
members and 586 justices to govern London. The 
absurdity of such a state of things is obvious when 
expressed in terms of numbers. It is only a little 
less obvious when count is taken of the several 
administrative bodies. Their titles include "Council," 
" Board," " Authority," " Body," " Board of Manage- 
ment," " Committee," " Commissioners," and their 
jurisdiction and duties are as varied and intermingled 
as well could be. London is a county differing widely 
in every respect from all other counties. Its council 
administers all the duties transferred from the justices 
in 1888, and many municipal matters besides, and it 
is the central governing authority of London. It 
does not, however, administer all central matters. 
It shares this with the ancient city of London, with 
statutory bodies created before 1888, and with statu- 
tory bodies created after 1888. The city of London 
Corporation is market authority, except in one or two 
cases, as Covent Garden, in private possession of the 
Duke of Bedford, and some local markets ; it is also 
sanitary authority for the Thames. The Asylums 
Board is the central poor-law authority and the 
health authority for infectious sick ; the Water Board 
manages the water supply ; the Port Authority ad- 
ministers the docks and the port ; the Commissioner 
of Police controls the police force and has other duties 
which elsewhere are administered by municipal author- 
ities ; two river conservancies are responsible for the 
Thames and the Lea respectively ; the Central Un- 



GROWTH 329 

employed Body deals with unemployment in London ; 
the Local Pension Committee and the Insurance 
Committee deal with their respective duties. Under- 
neath all this central government thus unaccountably 
divided there are local governments — twenty-eight 
Borough Councils different from all other such 
councils in the kingdom, thirty-one Boards of 
Guardians, six Boards of Management for poor-law 
schools and poor-law sick, besides other specially 
appointed Committees. The whole makes up a con- 
glomerate which cannot be styled local government, 
cannot be considered as representative government in 
any sense. There are so many ill-defined connections 
between the citizen and his representative that there 
ceases to be any effective connection at all. And 
London, the capital of the empire, with a glorious 
history, is under the heels of many interests, many 
cliques and parties, which play one against the other 
and never play for the community. 

I have called early Victorian London a domestic 
city full of scenes which had not disappeared from 
its midst until the great era of building which began 
in I860. 1 It is no use, however, dwelling upon this 
aspect of modern London. It is not the wholly true 
aspect. There are thousands of home-dwellers in 
London, and there will always be such. But these do 
not count for much. They are the people neglected 
as not incidental to the real situation. That which 
really matters is its position as capital city of the 
1 In my London 1837-1897, p. 17. 



330 LONDON 

Empire, the centre of legislation for the nation, the 
centre of judicial appeal for the entire Empire. Very 
few Londoners realise what this last feature represents 
in empire government ; very few realise that in the 
daily law reports of the Times they may see appeals 
from Canada, South Africa, or Australia, cases remitted 
from the law courts of India to the House of Lords 
in London. On 25th January 1912 there was an 
appeal from the judgment of the Judicial Com- 
missioner of Upper Burma reversing a decree of the 
district court of Magwe, in the matter of Maung 
Aung Myat, a Twinzayo married to Mi Shive Ma. 
Not only are these names of strange sound to the 
ears of Londoners, but the proceedings are stranger 
still. Lord Macnaghten delivered their Lordships' 
judgment, and declared strange laws in support of it : 
that polygamy in Burma was lawful, that it was not 
unlawful to marry the sister of a living wife, and that 
marriage with a deceased wife's sister was not only 
proper but laudable ; that the marriage ceremony 
included many quaint customs, including " eating out 
of the same pot." After quoting text-books on 
Buddhist law, their Lordships decided to advise his 
Majesty that the appeal should be dismissed. 1 The 
whole case is imperial in the highest sense. English 
justice is believed in and its decisions willingly obeyed 
by native races. English judges deal not only with 
English law but with native law, and London is 
the centre from which the decisions proceed. They 
1 Times, 26th January 1912. 



GROWTH 331 

proceed to the homes of people unaccustomed to city 
life, to whom western civilisation is unknown, and 
they govern these lives. They govern them in the 
most important matters — family life, communal life, 
even temple ritual. London in this respect differs 
from every other capital city in Europe, and the 
difference represents its imperial position, a position 
which it has attained more by reason of its ancient 
powers, wisely consolidated and utilised, than by the 
endowment of powers by an external sovereign. She 
comes to her new imperial position silently and almost 
unrecognised by record or by history. 

We have thus come back, through the blackness 
just depicted, to London as an empire city. Poe's 
wonderful phrase, " The grandeur that was Rome," 
has been translated for us in Mr Stobart's impressive 
book. " The greatness that was London " belongs to 
its history, and that greatness still exists in spite of 
the shame of the Tudors and of the Stuarts, and the 
shame of the Victorians which has outshamed both 
Tudors and Stuarts. 1 

To change all this will include the rebuilding 
of London. Berlin has accomplished such a task, 
and made itself supremely ugly in the doing. Paris 
has done it without quite making itself beautiful. 
London can do it, and make itself beautiful in the 
doing. Three of the smallest fragments of history 
which have been already noted and may now be 

1 I have dealt with Victorian London in my little book published 
in the Victorian Era Series (1898). 



332 LONDON 

recalled will suffice to teach the way. James I.'s 
spoken wish for a rebuilding which would result in 
a beautiful city; Charles I I.'s royal command to 
proceed at once with the task presented by the 
genius of Wren ; Colonel Birch's proposal before 
Parliament, — these combine in themselves the neces- 
sary principles which should govern the making of 
the future London. 

There are cities which do not appeal to one. 
There are those which appeal to every fibre of 
one's nature. London is of this latter class. In 
spite of its many deflections from the ideal of con- 
tinuous history, its record is one long catalogue of 
praise from visitors, inhabitants, statesmen, poets, 
painters, and artists. The Romans who looked to 
it for defence stayed in it for "love of the place." 
At every stage of its history where such expressions 
are possible they have been made, and when the 
change from medievalism to modernism was accom- 
plished there is not a single foreign traveller who, 
if he recorded or criticised details, did not also 
proclaim his feeling for London. London produces 
a feeling, stands for a soul community, compels people, 
citizens and visitors alike, to a recognition of qualities 
and powers which nothing but its history can explain. 



CHAPTER XII 

THE GREATNESS THAT IS LONDON 

I have now finished the story of London's con- 
tinuity in English history from a great position in 
Roman history. I have shown that it is continuity 
of historical influences, not a mere survival of custom 
and usage. I have shown when and how it lapsed 
and when and how it revived, and have traced the last 
echo of that continuity to modern days in the march 
of the citizen army on its way to the battlefields 
of South Africa. I have shown that on the great 
emergency London has answered to the call on her 
historical influence. There is no city in Europe 
which has preserved its historical continuity so faith- 
fully as London has preserved hers — not Lyons, 
Trier, Nimes, Aries, Turin, not Paris or even Rome 
herself. If these are continuous by actual occupa- 
tion ; if they show remains of the forum, the bath, 
the theatre, or even the temple ; they show no 
continuity of historical influences — they are not 
constitutionally continuous. They may possess here 
and there a municipal rite, a social custom, but they 
never reveal their original position as a city-state of 
the Roman Empire. Their mediaeval history is 

333 



334 LONDON 

wholly municipal and never contributory to the 
formation or the government of the state. This, on 
the contrary, is what London reveals throughout the 
ages, the something more which is always present. 
Her prominence as a city-state with more power 
and influence than a municipal town is shown from 
time to time, and the silence between the several 
manifestations is all the more eloquent because of 
the expression which comes out so strongly and 
decisively when it is called forth by events. London 
is the only example of a city-state in modern history 
exercising her state powers as strongly as her civic 
powers, in connection with the personal sovereignty 
of early English and mediaeval times, in connection 
with Parliament in modern times, and in connection 
with military and other functions at all times. The 
essential difference between London and other cities 
beginning in the Roman Empire, lies in the fact that 
London has acted the part of city-state throughout, 
in modern as in ancient days. No other city has 
played this part. It was revolutionary Paris in a 
sea of blood which helped to form the modern state 
of France ; but it is constitutional London acting 
continuously and not tumultuously which has per- 
formed this service for modern England. A great 
city in two empires, the Roman and the British, she 
stands now in front of world changes and develop- 
ments in which the greatness that is London must be 
called upon to take its part. 

What, then, are the special problems of modern 



THE GREATNESS THAT IS LONDON 335 

times, problems unknown to the medievalist, only 
just beginning to be known to ourselves, problems 
which affect the history of cities, and of London first 
and foremost amongst cities ? They must be con- 
sidered from two points of view. The problem of 
empire comes first — what is the empire of the 
future in which London will find a place ? The 
problem of the city in relation to empire comes 
second — what will be the position of London in 
this new order of things ? This is not the place 
to deal fully with a subject so full of complexity 
and with such a vast outlook, but it is necessary 
to state the outlines of the case because it is only 
within these outlines that we finally bring ourselves 
to understand what the future position of London 
may be. 

The concentration of human activities and the 
mastery of civilisation over the productions of the 
whole world is the note of the future. Its first 
expression will be the peace of Europe, and this will 
bring into existence an empire of the West founded 
not on conquest but on economic justice. The peace 
of the world will be the policy of the world. Civili- 
sation is moving inevitably in this direction. For 
the first time in the world's history man has become 
conscious of the whole world's existence, and becom- 
ing conscious he is gradually grasping at the power 
which lies at his feet. The produce of the whole 
world at its best centres for each production is now 
being commanded by methods peculiarly foolish and 



336 LONDON 

uneconomical. Capital has risen to the knowledge 
of this, and has changed its outlook. It has ceased 
to be nationalised and become cosmopolitan. Labour 
will soon follow suit, and, instead of fighting capital 
on the old lines, will learn to assist it on the new, and 
will then in turn become cosmopolitan. It will assume 
its right relationship to capital, and capital will corre- 
spondingly answer. The world then will become a 
reality to its civilised inhabitants principally, to its 
backward races in a less degree. It will be governed 
not in territorial states by kings and ministers of 
state, but by kings of capital and kings of labour in 
combination, and all the glories that the world 
possesses, the glories of its past history, as of its 
natural features and beauties, will be at the disposal 
of its inhabitants. This is not mere idealism. The 
consolidation of the civilised world is a greater thing 
than the building up of the nationalities of ancient 
political states, and it must come ; and with it will 
come the application of civilised methods to bring 
about the happiness of all within the fold. The 
science of administration as well as natural science 
will place at the disposal of this civilisation the food 
products and the industrial products grown or manu- 
factured wherever it is best for them, and the entire 
world will be at the command of man's highest needs. 
The Suez Canal, the Panama Canal, the Euphrates 
Valley railway, the East African railway, are the 
material signs of this. Livingstone and Stanley, 
Cecil Rhodes and General Botha, are the pioneers 



THE GREATNESS THAT IS LONDON 337 

of it. The Government assistance to grow cotton 
in Africa is the first economic effort towards it. 
Political thought and literature are beginning to take 
note of it in terms which, if hardly commensurate 
with the true position, are beginning to tell in the 
same direction. All these factors in combination 
point towards one goal, one ideal, and human thought 
thus moved will end in human action. The govern- 
ing power will have to deal with some ugly problems 
before it settles down to its peace. Among these 
will be the problem of race. The relationship of the 
dominant white race, with its magnificent endowment 
of the scientific spirit, to the yellow race with its 
capacity for reaping the full benefits of the white 
man's science, and to the black race with its 
intellectual qualifications far in the regions of the 
unknown — these are the great problems of the future 
to take the place of the problem of nationality in 
the past. 

The political result will be the formation of a new 
world empire of the West, and inevitably the mind 
turns back to the greatest political effort ever made 
by man, the ancient world empire of Rome. Com- 
parative studies have already begun, and these will 
continue in the light of actual events. They will 
show that no slavish copying of details will be 
possible, and that the only comparison will be in 
the spirit. A governing power to express the will 
of loosely knit self-governing units with common 

economic rules is the ideal of the future, taking all 

22 



338 LONDON 

it can from the tremendous lesson of the rise and fall 
of Rome. 

The highest type of the self-governing unit will be 
the city not the nation. We have been dealing with 
the problem of historical continuity in the life of 
London and its great constructive force ; and now 
that we have to touch upon these new problems, 
with their foundations built on a new ideal altogether, 
an ideal which travels into quite new interests, new 
economic conceptions, new political results, it may 
appear that historical forces will cease to operate. 
This cannot be ; and although it may be difficult 
after the divergence of the old channels to re- 
establish the historical note as the dominant note, 
it would be still more difficult to strike it out 
altogether. History is a living force not a dead 
record. And the movement of to-day is in the 
direction of historical influence. State administration 
has been the rule since the downfall of the Roman 
Empire. City administration is going to be the rule 
in the future. Cities which have only had a municipal 
existence are going by their intermunicipal connec- 
tions to have a world existence, by which empires 
and races, monarchs and statesmen, must in the future 
be guided. Citizens in the future will not be driven 
or herded into war, nor into any other of the evils of 
outworn feudalism and medievalism. They will have 
their say, and it will be a powerful say. They will 
surely echo back the great cry of Virgil when he 
defined the calamity of war as the bringing about 



THE GREATNESS THAT IS LONDON 339 

of the great crime of city breaking covenant with 

sister city — 

" Vicinae ruptis inter se legibus urbes 
Anna ferunt." 1 

It has been pointed out that the mediaeval state 
was unconscious of the citizen in the great bulk of his 
requirements. The modern state is unconscious in a 
different sense, purposely unconscious of the great 
bulk of requirements of the citizen. In particular 
the state has not recognised the rise of the city and 
of citizenship in the new civilisation which is steadily 
enveloping the western world. This, unfortunately, 
means that the great community of London, which 
has massed together interests of gigantic proportions, 
which answers to modern civilisation for much which 
civilisation is striving to represent, stands unrecog- 
nised. As Arthur Symons so finely puts it, " Cities 
are like people, with souls and temperaments of their 
own," and it is not good for the state to ignore the 
forces within its reach which are ripening into 
prominence. 

The great ideal of the world empire of peace within 
its boundaries which Virgil saw so clearly must be 
repeated to answer the needs of modern civilisation. 
The Roman world was the whole of the then civilisa- 
tion. The whole of modern civilisation will be the 
new world empire. It will be governed as Rome 
was governed, through its cities. The sovereignty of 
it will be the will of the people. The enemy of it 

1 Georgics, i. 510. 



340 LONDON 

will be the uncivilised races, yellow and black, on its 
outskirts. The struggle will decide whether the new 
civilisation, founded on the lines of the Roman 
civilisation which Virgil has pictured for us, will re- 
main or will crumble beneath the weight of its oppo- 
nents. The lesson of Rome thus repeated at every 
stage should lead to something better than decline 
and fall. The lesson will be learned not from the 
doings of emperors but from the statesmanship of 
Rome. The greatest instance of this, the greatest 
effort at empire-building in all history, is the parcel- 
ling out of North Africa among newly founded 
city-states. We can even at this distance of time 
measure the magnificence of this act, not so much 
in the material remains of that magnificence as in 
the overwhelming evidence of its success. Rome 
then taught mankind what a world empire could be 
made and how it could be made. Europe, it is true, 
did not learn the lesson, and has taken all the inter- 
vening centuries to work out its own failure. But it 
is learning it now, and the progress will be more 
rapid than is expected. 

It is perhaps too early to gauge the full extent 
and force of the new position, but this is the place 
to note that just as it is being, or has been, dis- 
covered that the future centres of man's social and 
cultured life lie in the cities, the governing authorities 
of two great cities, and those two cities no other than 
London and Paris, began a series of exchange visits, 
which have since been extended to London and 



THE GREATNESS THAT IS LONDON 341 

Berlin, London and Vienna, London and Stockholm, 
and, latest of all, the inter municipal proposals of the 
American cities. There has been produced there- 
from a sort of intermunicipal conception of things 
which has hitherto not found a place among the 
dominant forces of modern civilisation. It is not too 
much to say that the juxtaposition of theory and 
practice thus brought about is a remarkable fact 
which cannot be ignored. Communities of men are 
governed, as individuals are governed, by all sorts 
of influences which, working silently and unseen, 
produce results which are observable for the most 
part only when they have passed into history and 
have been subjected to the analysis of scientific 
inquiry. But the obvious significance of the present 
position is not a matter of history ; it is part of the 
work of the present day. It is not mere accident 
that this psychological moment stands revealed so 
plainly. It is not mere accident that men engaged 
in the practical affairs of life find themselves for the 
moment standing aside, and discovering for them- 
selves that at the back of municipal interchange of 
thought lies a whole realm of usefulness which has 
hitherto not been opened up to modern municipal 
ideas. It was partly recognised by the ancient Greek 
and Roman municipalities ; it was faintly recognised 
by mediaeval cities and towns. But if it becomes a 
concept of the modern system of governance, it is 
destined to assume far larger proportions than was 
possible to the older municipalities. At the most, 



342 LONDON 

the older idea of municipal interrelationship was 
strictly limited. The leagues of the Greek cities 
were limited not only in geography, but in duration. 
The affiliation of the daughter cities of ancient Rome 
was marred by the overwhelming greatness of the 
mother city. The five burghs of Scotland, the league 
of the Danish towns of England, and the mediaeval 
league of the Cinque Ports only count for a special 
method of meeting special and local requirements. 
London and her sister capitals, however, have to- 
gether begun an entirely new phase. They have 
discovered in the idiosyncrasies of each other food 
for reflection and study, while in the common ground 
occupied by all cities they have found an extension 
of municipal possibilities whose area and rate of 
development are scarcely measurable — in a word, 
they have discovered that municipal problems have 
to do with people's needs and rights, with some 
of the most important phases of modern civilisation, 
and that these may, nay must, be considered apart 
from the boundaries of nations, and apart from the 
conflict of national interests. Such a discovery does 
not rest even at this important stage, for it is obvious 
that the breakdown of international ignorance and 
jealousy must follow the establishment of inter- 
municipal aims and successes, and that in this way 
the surest path to the peace of civilised humanity has 
been laid down. This is the message which comes to 
us from a consideration of past conditions in relation 
to modern requirements. That it is a great and in- 



THE GREATNESS THAT IS LONDON 343 

spiring message is, I think, self-evident. That it flows 
from the unique history of London above all the cities 
of Europe is due to the newly discovered facts in that 
history which have now been marshalled into some- 
thing like order for those who will profit by them. 

If we are face to face with the supremely important 
fact that city life is going to be the life of the future, 
as it was the life of ancient Greece and ancient Rome, 
it means city expansion and a means of knitting 
country life into the new developments. The Domes- 
day boroughs, which were the centre of the old shire- 
men's life, will again become the model of future 
national life, if the country is wise enough to read the 
lessons of history aright, wise enough to insist upon 
reform founded upon principles. Jealousy of the 
cities will be got rid of. The greatness and special 
characteristics of London will be understood and 
then appreciated — must be understood in order to be 
appreciated. The expansion of Glasgow, Manchester, 
Liverpool, and other expanding cities will be recog- 
nised and assisted. But expansion in the new sense 
will be totally unlike the halting, unregulated expan- 
sion of the past. Government from the city and by 
the city will be the note of the future, and it will 
include stretches of territory controlled by the city 
in obedience to the economic and industrial require- 
ments of areas formed by these requirements. The 
curious and uninteresting policy of forming series of 
so-called boroughs instead of one great city govern- 
ment will give way to the larger ideal by which the 



344 LONDON 

country will be governed not by racial or national 
ideals but by economic realities, and these will result in 
the formation of cities with boundaries which include 
rural as well as urban territory, and which stretch 
across the whole country, boundary meeting boundary. 
The functions of city government will be extended, 
in order to meet the expansion of city life. The 
beauty of towns, such a glory of the mediaeval 
borough, will again be insisted upon as a duty which 
citizens owe to the natural beauties they destroy. 
Ugliness is a sin, and will be proclaimed so. Some of 
the old conceptions of Greek cities, and of Rome and 
Italian cities, will arise in their modern form, and we 
shall find the noble words of Lucian being suitably 
applied to modern conditions : " A city in our con- 
ception is not the buildings — walls, temples, docks, 
and so forth ; these are no more than the local 
habitation that provides the members of the com- 
munity with shelter and safety : it is in the citizens 
that we find the root of the matter ; they it is that 
replenish and organise and achieve and guard, cor- 
responding in the city to the soul in man. Holding 
this view we are not indifferent, as you see, to our 
city's body ; that we adorn with all the beauty we 
can impart to it ; it is provided with internal buildings 
and fenced as securely as may be with external walls. 
But our first, our engrossing preoccupation, is to make 
our citizens noble of spirit and strong of body." 1 

1 Lucian, Anachards. This is Fowler's fine translation, iii. 199. 
Compare Thucydides, lib. ii., cap. xxxviii. 



THE GREATNESS THAT IS LONDON 345 

One way of carrying this into effect almost touches 
upon the declared aspirations of modern thought. 
Lucian says of Athens : " The city pays for the 
admission of citizens to the theatre, where the con- 
templation of ancient heroes and villains in tragedy 
and comedy has its educational effect of warning and 
encouragement." Tn a word, there will be added to 
the ordinary duties of municipalities the idealism of 
city life, in order to make it worthy of the civilisation 
which in its new developments is only just beginning 
to dawn upon the world. 

This double heritage involves a double duty. Such 
a heritage is worth preserving for local government 
institutions in the future — local institutions are worth 
preserving in order to have such a heritage properly 
administered. When once the citizen of the future 
has comprehended what his life is to be he will expect 
great things of it. Municipal wardrobes and tinsel 
will have to give way to municipal work. Municipal 
doubts and fears will have to give way to municipal 
ideals and aspirations. The men and women of London 
will learn from the men and women of Paris, Vienna, 
Berlin, Stockholm, and others of her sister capital 
cities ; the men and women of Birmingham, Liver- 
pool, Glasgow, and their lesser brethren will learn 
from Marseilles, Hamburg, Cologne, Buda-Pesth, and 
the others of like status. Municipalism will tread 
lightly over national boundaries, and cities will once 
more become a power in the land. 

We now come to the question of London's place 



346 LONDON 

in the new order of things. It is singular that a 
great historian of Roman Britain, Dr Haverfield, 
should have declared that it will have no place ; 
whereas all my own conclusions, drawn from London 
in its continuity from the Roman city-state, are 
diametrically opposed to those of Dr Haverfield. 
" Roman London," he says, " was the child of those 
forces of Nature which we sum up in the word 
geography, and it was also their victim. To their 
great power the Roman city owed its rise, its three 
and a half centuries of prosperity, and its fall." 
Dr Haverfield cannot get over the hundred years 
during which history was silent, and which are repre- 
sented by tradition and by survival ; and then he 
adds that to these forces of Nature " London owed 
its second rise as an English city and the long life 
which has now lasted a thousand years. But to-day 
the signs are plain that English London is no more 
immortal than its Roman predecessor. The discovery 
of the steam engine, the opening of the Atlantic 
to ocean-borne traffic, the opening of the English 
mineral resources to commerce, have shifted the 
geographical centre of our island from the south- 
east coast and the Thames to the west and the north. 
Already, as students of commercial and industrial life 
know, the metropolis has ceased to represent the most 
active and prosperous and thickly populated part of 
England. Indeed, there yawns to-day between London 
and the north a gulf that is almost a national danger. 
London may, I suppose, remain, like the political 



THE GREATNESS THAT IS LONDON 347 

centres of some other European states, the official and 
administrative capital, and if it loses its pre-eminence 
its fall will be slow : the death-throes of great cities 
last through many centuries. But someone will 
some day shift the English capital northwards, and 
the government will follow the London newpapers, 
which have already begun to open their offices in 
Manchester." This is a long quotation, but it is the 
first dictum of its kind that has been pronounced. 
It is founded upon the historical conception of London 
in juxtaposition with the industrial conditions of 
modern times — a sufficiently powerful combination 
to command the closest attention. 

Dr Haverfield's historical conception must, in face 
of the evidence brought together in this book, 
appear to be singularly narrow. My maximum and 
his minimum nowhere meet on the historical plane. 
Suppose by the mere force of reiterated argument 
the historian cuts off Roman from Saxon London, 
what does he obtain ? Not an English city of the 
type of York, Colchester, Winchester, Exeter, Lin- 
coln, and the rest of the occupied Roman cities with 
their manorial and communal land systems ; not an 
English city of native growth from the foundation, 
of the type presented by Nottingham, Southampton, 
Malmesbury, Doncaster, and others. He would 
get an incongruous thing, not to be explained or 
accounted for by any analogy, any parallel circum- 
stances, which can be sought for in later history, 
tradition, or institutional survivals. London stands 



348 LONDON 

unique in British history, and it is from this position 
that her history has to be investigated and brought 
into proper relationship with the state and with other 
institutions. The greatness of London has not been 
dimmed, because it does not depend upon one or 
a dozen factors. Its whole history shows it to be 
a living organism of extraordinary power at every 
stage of its exhausting life. Its magnificent develop- 
ment has never been at the bidding of outside forces. 
Neither monarch nor noble has had a hand in its 
making. It has made itself, and in the pages in 
which endeavour has been made to set out the various 
stages of its evolution the point has over and over 
again been made. 

If Dr Haverfield's retrospect seems wrong, so does 
his prospect. He has not fully grasped the economic 
and industrial position. London is the greatest 
manufacturing city in the kingdom, though evidence 
of it is submerged in all the other sides of its life. 
It extends far outside its formal boundaries from the 
Thames to the sea border. Dover, Southampton, 
and Harwich are but outports of London. And it 
is only when the position of London in this extended 
sense is grasped and understood that its future as a 
city-institution can be gauged. 

The commercialism that was Tudor London has 
developed into the world-London as one of the great 
human life-centres. Here, if anywhere, London will 
refound itself as one of the city-states of modern 
civilisation which are going to command these opera- 



THE GREATNESS THAT IS LONDON 349 

tions — not empires and nations, but cities. The 
greatness that was London is ready to be handed 
on to serve its new developments, and the conscious 
note of continuity which has come so strongly 
from the past will still be effective. As in the 
past, so in the future, the greatness that is London 
will be responded to by the great. The unknown 
hero of a.d. 61 ; the unnamed of the hundred 
years ; the sub-reguli of the seventh century ; /Elfred 
in the ninth century ; Eadmund, Cnut, and Harold 
Godwinsson of the eleventh century ; Ansgar the 
Sheriff; the citizen statesman who led Plantagenet 
London ; the men of Tudor and Stuart times ; the 
lord mayors who forced the issues of Georgian London 
and invoked the inspired praise of Chatham — all 
these were the great individuals answering the calls 
of London's greatness. The answering was always 
equal to the occasion, and when historically we look 
back upon men and institution, upon city and citizen, 
we find London acting faithfully both to its past 
and its then future. The nation in putting its hand 
upon London was helped towards its own develop- 
ment ; and when the great moment again arrives for 
cities to be fighting the issues that lie before them, 
there will be statesmen and citizens to represent the 
issues, and London will take her place in the new 
development. She will be a different London in a 
different world ; perhaps she will be the capital city 
of the new world. 

Whatever the result, London will be the centre, 



350 LONDON 

as she has been the centre all these centuries, of 
the new institutions which will come into existence. 
It will not be a small uncared-for London, not a 
London shrinking within its walls and commanding 
nothing but the fragments of its former greatness 
— the greatness that was London. She will be a 
great London with a territorium stretching from the 
Thames to the sea, endowed with powers of self- 
government within the empire to which she belongs. 
London at this stage is about to displace her history 
by the necessities of modern life. She will be a city 
governed by state law entirely, governed to produce 
certain results in the health and general good of her 
inhabitants according to the dicta of science in deter- 
mining what is public health and public good. She 
will work alongside of other cities, gaining and im- 
parting the lessons of experience. The old order has 
at last completely changed. Not even the fragments 
of immemorial custom, strewn as we have discovered 
across the pages of London records, will survive. 
London is to be a new London. And in taking up 
her new position she will not ungladly learn the best 
that is to be learned of her great past, which has 
been the province of this book to unravel. 



APPENDIX 

I (p. 30) 

The Archaeological Journal, vol. xlii. pp. 269-302, contains an 
excellent article on " Early Sites and Embankments on the 
Margins of the Thames Estuary," by Mr F. C. J. Spurrell. The 
geological evidence is carefully examined and its relationship to 
the archaeological finds stated very clearly, and though subsequent 
research has added fresh material to both sections of the study 
it would not appear to vary considerably the conclusions drawn 
by Mr Spurrell. The Romans were very busy in the Thames. 
Pottery, including Samian ware, is found in layers and scattered 
over the foreshore and banks of the river (p. 276). At Higham 
the Roman potteries covered the land for about three miles 
along the edge of the marsh (p. 277). The general level of the 
pottery works is about eleven feet down (p. 279). Nowhere has 
Saxon pottery been seen or heard of (p. 280). At Barking on 
the edge of the Roding there are remains of a large prehistoric 
camp. This camp is a waterside camp, but is wholly above 
tidal level ; it appears to have been of the order of camps of 
refuge for women, children, and cattle, surrounded by swamps 
to which its protection was mainly left ; at the north-east 
corner is a watch mound which rises scarcely fifteen feet above 
the average level of the camp (p. 297). At Crayford is the 
barest outline of an oval camp (p. 297). 

II (p. 62) 

The following passages from Wren's Parentalia afford addi- 
tional information on the point of view adopted by Wren : 

351 



352 LONDON 

"It has been before observ'd (Sect. 1) that the Graves of 
several Ages and Fashions in strata, or Layers of Earth one 
above another, particularly at the North-side of Paul's, mani- 
festly shew'd a great Antiquity from the British and Roman 
Times, by the Means whereof the ground had been raised ; but 
upon searching for the natural Ground below these Graves, the 
Surveyor observed that the Foundation of the old Church stood 
upon a layer of very close and hard Pot-earth, and concluded 
that the same Ground which had born so weighty a Building 
might reasonably be trusted again. However, he had the 
Curiosity to search further, and accordingly dug Wells in 
several Places, and discern 'd this hard Pot-earth to be on the 
North-side of the Churchyard about six Feet thick, and more, 
but thinner and thinner towards the South, till it was upon the 
declining of the Hill scarce four Feet: still he searched lower, 
and found nothing but dry Sand, mix'd sometimes unequally, 
but loose, so that it would run through the Fingers. He went 
on till he came to Water and Sand mixed with Periwincles and 
other Sea-shells ; these were about the level of Low-water Mark. 
He continued boreing till he came to hard Beach, and still under 
that, till he came to the natural hard Clay, which lies under 
the City, and Country, and Thames also far and wide. 

" By these Shells it was evident the Sea had been where now 
the Hill is, on which Paul's stands. 

" The Surveyor was of opinion, the whole Country between 
Camberwell-hill, and the Hills of Essex might have been a great 
Frith or Sinus of the Sea, and much wider near the Mouth of 
the Thames, which made a large Plain of Sand at Low-water, 
through which the River found its way ; but at Low-water, as 
oft it happened in Summer-weather, when the Sun dried the 
Surface of the Sand, and a strong Wind happened at the same 
time, before the Flood came on, the Sands would drive with the 
Wind, and raise Heaps, and in Time large and lofty Sand-hills ; 
for so are the Sand-hills raised upon the opposite Coasts of 
Flanders and Holland. The Sands upon such a Conjuncture of 
Sun-shine and Wind, drive in visible Clouds : this might be the 



APPENDIX 353 

effect of many Ages, before History, and yet without having 
Recourse to the Flood. 

" This mighty broad Sand (now good Meadow) was restrained 
by large Banks still remaining, and reducing the River into its 
Channel ; a great Work, of which no History gives account : 
the Britains were too rude to attempt it ; the Saxons too much 
busied with continual Wars ; he concluded therefore it was a 
Roman Work ; one little Breach in his Time cost 17,000i? to 
restore. 

" The Sand-hill at Paul's in the Time of the Roman Colony, 
was about 12 Feet lower than now it is ; and the finer Sand 
easier driving with the Wind lay uppermost, and the hard Coat 
of Pot-earth might be thus made ; for Pot-earth dissolved in 
Water, and view'd by a Microscope, is but impalpable fine Sand, 
which with Fire will vitrify ; and, of this Earth upon the Place 
were those Urns, Sacrificing Vessels, and other Pottery-ware 
made, which (as noted before) were found here in great Abund- 
ance, more especially towards the North-east of the Ground. 

" In the Progress of the Works of the Foundations, the 
Surveyor met with one unexpected difficulty ; he began to lay 
the Foundations from the West-end, and had proceeded success- 
fully through the Dome to the East-end, where the Brick-earth 
Bottom was yet very good ; but as he went on to the North-east 
Corner, which was the last, and where nothing was expected to 
interrupt, he fell, in prosecuting the design, upon a Pit, where 
all the Pot-earth had been robb'd by the Potters of old Time : 
here were discovered Quantities of Urns, broken Vessels, and 
Pottery-ware of divers Sorts and Shapes ; how far this Pit 
extended Northward, there was no occasion to examine ; no Ox- 
sculls, Horns of Stags, and Tusks of Boars were found, to 
corroborate the Accounts of Stow, Camden, and others ; nor any 
Foundations more Eastward. If there was formerly any Temple 
to Diana, he supposed it might have been within the Walls 
of the Colony, and more to the South " (Wren's Parentatia, 
MDCCL., pp. 285-6). 

" The extent of the Roman Colony, or Prefecture, particularly 

23 



354 LONDON 

Northward, the Surveyor had occasion to discover by this 
Accident. The parochial Church of St Mary le Bow, in 
Cheapside, required to be rebuilt after the great Fire : the 
Building had been mean and low, with one corner taken out 
for a Tower, but upon restoring that, the new Church could be 
rendered square. Upon opening the ground, a Foundation was 
discern VI firm enough for the new intended Fabrick, which (on 
further Inspection, after digging down sufficiently, and remov- 
ing what Earth or Rubbish lay in the way) appear'd to be Walls 
with the Windows also, and the Pavement of a Temple, or 
Church, of Roman Workmanship, intirely buryYl under the 
Level of the present Street. Hereupon, he determin'd to erect 
his new Church over the old ; and in order to the necessary 
regularity and Square of the new Design, restor'd the Corner ; 
but then another place was to be found for the Steeple : the 
Church stood about 40 Feet backwards from the high Street, 
and by purchasing the Ground of one private House not yet re- 
built, he was enabled to bring the Steeple forward so as to range 
with the Street-houses of Cheapside. Here, to his Surprise, he 
sunk about 18 Feet deep through made-ground, and then 
imagin'd he was come to the natural Soil, and hard Gravel, but 
upon full Examination, it appealed to be a Roman Causeway of 
rough Stone, close and well rammed, with Roman Brick and 
Rubbish at the Bottom, for a Foundation, and all firmly 
cemented. This Causeway was four Feet thick (the thickness of 
the Via Appia, according as Mons. Montfaucon measur'd, it was 
about three Parisian Feet, or three Feet two Inches and a half 
English). Underneath this Causeway lay the natural Clay, over 
which that part of the City stands, and which descends at least 
forty Feet lower. He concluded then to lay the Foundation of 
the Tower upon the very Roman Causeway, as most proper to 
bear what he had designed, a weighty and lofty Structure. 

" He was of opinion for divers Reasons, that this High-way 
ran along the North Boundary of the Colony. The Breadth 
then North and South, was from the Causeway, now Cheapside, 
to the River Thames ; the Extent East and West, from Tower 



APPENDIX 355 

Hill to Ludgate, and the principal middle Street, or Praetorian 
Way, was Watling Street. 

" The Colony was walPd next the Thames, and had a Gate 
there called Dow-gate, but anciently Dour-gate, which signified 
the Water-gate. 

" On the North side, beyond the Causeway, was a great Fen, 
or Morass, in those Times ; which the Surveyor discover'd more 
particularly when he had occasion to build a new East-front to 
the parochial Church of St Laurence near Guildhall ; for the 
Foundation of which, after sinking seven Feet, he was obliged 
to pile twelve Feet deeper ; and if there was no Causeway over 
the Bog, there could be no reason for a Gate that Way. 

"At length about the Year 1414, all this moorish ground was 
drain'd by the Industry and Charge of Francerius, a Lord-mayor, 
and still retains the name of Moor-fields, and the Gate, Moor- 
gate. London-stone, as is generally supposed, was a pillar, in 
the Manner of the Milliarium Aureum, at Rome, from whence 
the Account of their Miles began ; but the Surveyor was of 
Opinion by Reason of the large Foundation, it Avas rather some 
more considerable Monument in the Forum ; for in the adjoin- 
ing Ground on the South Side (upon digging for Cellars, after 
the Great Fire) were discovered some tessellated Pavements, 
and other extensive Remains of Roman Workmanship, and 
Buildings. 1 

" On the West-side was situated the Praetorian Camp, which 
was also walPd in to Ludgate, in the Vallum of which, was dug 
up near the Gate, after the Fire, a Stone, with an Inscription, 
and the Figure of a Roman Soldier, which the Surveyor pre- 
sented to the Archbishop of Canterbury, who sent it to Oxford, 
and it is reposited among the Arundellian Marbles. This is a 

1 Probably this might in some degree have imitated the Milliarium 
Aureum at Constantinople, which was not in the Form of a pillar as at 
Rome, but an eminent Building ; for under its Roof (according to 
Cedrenus and Suidas) stood the Statues of Constantine and Helena ; 
Trajan ; an equestrian Statue of Hadrian ; a Statue of Fortune ; and 
many other Figures and Decorations. 



356 LONDON 

sepulchral Monument dedicated to the Memory of Vivius 
Marcianus, a Soldier of the second Legion, stiPd Augusta, by 
his Wife Januaria Matrina. The Inscription is in this Manner : 

D. M. 

VIVIO MARCI 

-ANO ML. LEG. II. 

AVG. IANVARIA 

MATINA CONIVNX 

PIENTISSIMA POSV 

—IT ME MORRAM. 

" N.B. — The Extract of this Inscription published in the 
Marmora Oxoniensia, Numb. 147, is erroneous. 

" The Soldiers used to be buried in Vallo, as the Citizens, 
extra Portas in Pomaerio ; there "'tis most probable the extent 
of the Camp reached to Ludgate, to the declining Hill, that 
Way. The Surveyor gave but little Credit to the common 
Story, that a Temple had been here to Diana (which some have 
believed upon the report of the digging up, formerly, and of 
later Years, Horns of Stags, Ox-heads, Tusks of Boars, etc.), 
meeting with no such indications in all his Searches ; but that 
the North-side of this Ground had been very anciently a great 
Burying-place was manifest ; for upon the digging the Founda- 
tions of the present Fabrick of St Paul's he found under the 
Graves of the latter ages, in a row below them, the Burial 
Places of the Saxon Times : the Saxons as it appeared, were 
accustomed to line their Graves with Chalk-stones, though some 
more eminent were entomed in Coffins of whole Stones. Below 
these were British Graves, where were found Ivory and Wooden 
Pins, of a hard Wood seemingly Box, in Abundance, of about 
6 Inches long ; it seems the Bodies were only wrapped up, and 
pinned in woollen Shrouds, which being consumed, the Pins 
remained entire. In the same row and deeper, were Roman 
Urns intermixed : This was eighteen Feet deep or more, and 
belonged to the Colony when Romans and Britains lived and 
died together. 



APPENDIX 357 

" The most remarkable Roman Urns, Lamps, Lacrymatories, 
and Fragmants of Sacrificing- vessels, etc., were found deep in 
the Ground, towards the North-east Corner of St Paul's 
Church, near Cheapside ; these were generally well wrought, 
and embossed with various figures and devices, of the Colour of 
the modern red Portugal Ware, some brighter like Coral, and 
of a Hardness equal to China Ware, and as well glaz'd. Among 
divers Pieces which happened to have been preserved, are, a 
Fragment of a Vessel, in Shape of a Bason, whereon Charon is 
represented with his Oar in his Hand receiving a naked Ghost ; 
a paters sacrificalis with an inscription pater, clo., a remarkable 
small Urn of a fine hard earth, and leaden Colour, containing 
about half a pint ; many Pieces of Urns with the names of 
the Potters embossed on the Bottoms, such as, for instance, 

ALBUCI. M. 1 VICTORINUS. PATER. F. 2 MOSSI. M. OF. 3 NIGRI. AO. 

mapilii. m., etc., a sepulchral earthen Lamp, figured with two 
Branches of Palms, supposed Christian ; and two Lacrymatories 
of Glass. 

" Among the many Antiquities the Surveyor had the fortune 
to discover in other parts of the Town, after the Fire, the most 
curious was a large Roman Urn, or Ossuary of Glass, with a 
handle, containing a Gallon and half, but with a very short 
Neck, and wide Mouth, of whiter Metal, encompassed Girthwise, 
with five parallel Circles. This was found in Spital-fields, 
which he presented to the Royal-society, and is preserved in 
their Museum" (Wren's Parentalia, MDCCL., pp. 265-267). 

Ill (p. 63) 

In Strype's Additions to Stoiv (vol. ii., Appendix, chapter v.) 
is a description of the Woodward collection which will form a 
useful addendum to the text. 

" Of divers Roman and other antique Curiosities found in 
London, before and since the great Fire. 

"There are preserved, either in public Repositories, or in 

1 Manibus. 2 Fecit. 3 Officina. 



358 LONDON 

more private Custody, many antique Curiosities : Found chiefly 
in Digging Foundations for the Building of London after the 
great Fire, and occasionally at other Times. 

" In the Repository of the Royal Society in Gresham College, 
there is a large Glass Urn, that holds about a Gallon ; and hath 
a few Shivers of Bones in it : It was taken up since the Fire in 
Spittlefields. The Glass is somewhat thick, bellying out, and 
contracting towards the Mouth with a Lip. 

" But the Collection, made by Dr John Woodward, Professor 
of Physic in Gresham College, is by much the most considerable 
of any. For, besides an ancient marble Bust of Jupiter, a 
marble Head with a Phrygian Tiara, a Grecian Basso-Relievo, 
a Votive Shield, exhibiting the Sacking of Rome by the Gauls ; 
the Embossment of which is allowed by the greatest Judges 
to be the finest and most exquisite that all Antiquity has left 
us : Several Icunculi of the Deities, both Egyptian and Roman : 
a considerable Variety of Amulets, Periapta, Phalli, Bullae, 
Scarabaei : Gems with historical Sculpture, Heads, etc. graven 
upon them : Camei and Intaglia's of Egyptian, Grecian, and 
Roman Work : Many Roman, Greek, Syrian, and other Medals : 
Roman Weights : A Roman Semi-Congius : Urns, Lachryma- 
tories, and other Things, procured from Alexandria, Constanti- 
nople, Rome, etc. And, besides, an ancient Roman Altar from 
the Picts Wall in Northumberland, with a considerable Inscrip- 
tion upon it : Several ancient Weapons of Brass, Thuribula, 
Paterae, Urns, etc., found in the remoter Parts of this Kingdom, 
Cumberland, the Isle of Man, Yorkshire, Wiltshire, Gloucester- 
shire, Northamptonshire, Devonshire, etc. He has a vast Variety 
of ancient Instruments, Utensils, Vasa, and the like, that have 
been discovered in several Places in and about this City : In 
particular, several Vessels of religious Use, and employed in 
the Sacrifices, as, for Example, Praefericula, Simpula, Paterae, 
Thuribula, Labra, digged up ; together with Horns, Teeth, and 
other Parts of the Beasts that were offered in Sacrifice ; above 
twenty Sepulchral Urns, of various Forms and Sizes : Likewise, 
Lances, Amphorae, Crateres, Scyphi, Gutti, Pocula, Ollae 



APPENDIX 359 

nummarias clausae ; Parts of the Plasmatafictilia, in which the 
embossed Vasa were moulded ; and Lamps of various Sorts. 
The precedent Vessels are of Pot or Earth ; several of them 
extremely fine, well baked, some curiously glazed, and the 
Colours very beautiful. 

" As to their Forms, they are universally very elegant and 
handsome. And, indeed, the Doctor, the Possessor of them, 
well observes, that the Remains of these Works of the Romans 
shew them to have been a People of an exact Genius, good Fancy, 
and curious Contrivance. 

" It is observable also in this Collection, that the Things are 
fair, well preserved, and intire ; which, considering the great 
Number and Diversity of them, how brittle Pots and Glasses 
are, and how liable to be defaced, injured, and dashed in Pieces, 
is the more extraordinary. 

" He hath likewise, in his Cabinet of Antiquities, a Glass 
Urn, with a Cover ; also a Scyphus ; divers Ampullae, Phialae, 
and Lachrymatories of Glass, that are very fair and perfect. 
Then, there are several Pieces of British Money, coined both 
before and after the Descent of the Romans upon this Island. 
As also Roman Numismata, coined here : Besides, Saxon, Danish, 
and Norman Coins, which, as well as others, are very fair, and 
happily preserved. Likewise, Styles of Ivory, Bone, and Steel: 
Several Fibulae, Aciculi, Bullae, Claves, Armillae, Annuli, Beads 
of various Sorts ; Aleae, Tessarae, Pectines, Calcaria, Spicula, 
Jacula. Likewise Tiles, Pieces of Lithostrata, or tessellated 
Pavements of Earth, Glass, Paste, Enamel, and gilt. 

" So that Dr Woodward's Museum is a Treasury of all Sorts 
of Commodities and Utensils, sacred and profane, of ancient 
Heathen Rome : As Vessels for Sacrifice, and for other sub- 
ordinate Uses in Sacris. Vessels also for Uses Domestic, 
Sepulchral, Military, Personal, for Wearing and Dressing : Also 
divers Pieces of Art relating to Building, or Sculpture, ex- 
planatory of some Parts of Roman History. 

" Besides these Remains of Roman Skill and Workmanship, 
here are also reposited several Gothic historical Carvings, in 



360 LONDON 

Copper, Ivory, and Wood ; the Work of some of them very 
good : Impresses on Lead, and leaden Seals, that have been 
affixed anciently to Popes Bulls ; with various other Things, all 
well chosen, of real Importance, and serviceable to some useful 
Design. 

" One great Intention of this learned Gentleman, as he hath 
assured me, in amassing together so great a Number of these 
Things, and that with so great Diligence, Trouble, and Expense, 
was in Order to clear and give Light to those ancient writers 
who mention and treat of them, viz. the Greeks and Romans ; 
which he has read and studied with great Exactness. Another 
of his Ends herein was, to illustrate the History and Antiquities 
of this great and noble City ; out of the Ruins of which these 
Things were retrieved, upon the Occasion of that great Digging, 
greater indeed than ever happened from the Foundation of it 
before, and the Removal of Rubbish that was made in all Parts, 
after the late great Fire. And, indeed, the Medals and Coins, 
the various Figures, historical Embossments, and Inscriptions 
upon the Vases, contribute very much to that End. And 
farther, from the various Places in which the Urns were found 
reposited, which, according to the Laws of the Twelve Tables, 
were to be buried without the Walls, he is able to ascertain the 
ancient Bounds of this City, whilst Roman : From several 
Things discovered in laying the Foundation of St Paul's Church, 
to shew, not only that there was anciently a Temple there ; but 
also, by some Instances to prove that it was dedicated to Diana, 
according to the ancient Tradition, notwithstanding what a very 
learned Antiquary, as well as Divine, has lately offered to the 
Contrary. 

" Indeed, the far greater Part of these Things is so very 
considerable, that it would afford much Satisfaction to inquisi- 
tive People, to see Icons graved of them ; and that the Possessor 
could have spared so much Time from his Business, and his 
other Studies, as to have writ his own Observations and Reflec- 
tions upon them, that I might have entered them, as I requested 
him, in this Work. 



APPENDIX 361 

" Near the Foundation of Charing Cross, at a great Depth, 
were Stones found, which seemed to be a sort of coarse Marble, 
of a blackish Colour, and cut into several plain Sides, but 
iregular : From whence, saith Dr Crew, they may be argued to 
be very ancient. These were given by Sir Joseph Williamson 
to the Museum in Gresham College. 

" In Mark Lane a strange Brick was found 40 Years before, 
or better, about 20 Feet deep in the Ground, by Mr Stockley, 
while he was digging a Foundation and Cellars for an House 
which he built for Mr Woolly. On this Brick was formed 
Sampson, as I had it from J. Bagford, with the Jaw-bone of an 
Ass in his right Hand, and his left Hand lifted up ; with two 
Foxes before him, running together, with Firebrands at their 
Tails ; scaring them into high standing Corn hard by. This, 
methinks, might have belonged to the House of some Jew 
dwelling thereabouts ; signifying his Malice to some neighbour- 
ing Christian Merchant that dealt in Corn. For it is remark- 
able, that, near this Place where this Brick was found, was also 
digged up burnt Wheat, to the Quantity of many Quarters ; 
very black, but yet sound : Probably it was some Granary 
consumed by Fire. 

" But take what the said Mr Bagford hath since writ in his 
Letter to Mr Hearne of Oxford : That this Brick was of 
Roman Make, of a curious red Clay, and in Bass-relief; and 
was a Key Brick to the Arch : And the burnt Wheat was 
conjectured to have lain buried ever since the Burning of the 
City 800 Years before. And that it is preserved in the Museum 
belonging to the Royal Society in Fleet Street. And that 
Mr Waller's Conjecture of it was, that it had been made and 
set there by some Jew, settling here, in the Arch of his own 
Granary. 

" A Piece of Mosaic Work found deep under Ground in 
Holborn near St Andrew's Church, inlaid with black, white, 
and red Stones in Squares, and other regular Figures. In the 
abovesaid Museum. 

" In digging for the Foundations of St Paul's Cathedral at the 



362 LONDON 

west End since the Fire, was found Variety of Roman sacrificing 
Vessels, whereof a great Quantity of the Fragments were digged 
up. They were made of a curious red Earth ; the Glazing of 
them still remains, which is curious. They are of divers Shapes 
and Sizes, as Occasion should require them to be made Use of in 
their Sacrifices. And, in many, the Potter's Name was stamped 
at the Bottom. Some of these Mr Bagford, a Citizen of London, 
studious of Antiquities, and especially of such as relate to 
the said City, took up with his own Hands. Farther, on the 
south Side of the said west End was found a Potter's Kiln, the 
Shape of which was circular. In this the abovesaid sacrificing 
Vessels probably were made. It was near to the Temple where 
Diana was worshipped, for the more Convenience of the People 
that came thither to sacrifice ; that they might be furnished 
with all Sorts of Vessels they had Occasion for, at the Time 
when they made their Sacrifices. And likewise thereabouts 
were found several Moulds of Earth, some exhibiting Figures of 
Men, of Lions, of Leaves of Trees, and other Things. These 
were used to make Impression of those Things upon the Vessels. 
These Moulds are also among the forementioned curious 
Collections of Dr Woodward. The Representation of the 
foresaid Pottery, drawn with a Pen, is in the Possession of Sir 
Hans Sloane, Bart., M.D., of the Royal Society, with a 
Description of it added. 

"Also, at the south Side of St Paul's Church, at the 
Beginning to build it after the Fire, were found several Scalps 
of Oxen, and a large Quantity of Boars Tusks, with divers 
earthen Vessels, especially Patera? of different Shapes. 

" In Cannon Street, nigh Bush Lane, was found, pretty deep 
in the Earth, a large Pavement of Roman Mosaic Work. Dr 
Hook gave a Piece of it to the Repository in Gresham College. 

" In Goodman's Fields, without Aldgate, was a Roman 
Burying-place. For, since the Buildings there, about 1678, 
have been found there, in Digging for Foundations, vast 
Quantities of Urns, and other Roman Utensils, as Knives, 
Combs, etc., which are likewise in the Possession of Dr Wood- 



APPENDIX 363 

ward. Some of these Urns had Ashes of Bones of the Dead in 
them, and Brass and Silver Money : And an unusual Urn of 
Copper, curiously enamelled in Colours, red, blue, and yellow. 

" In Kent-street, all along the Gardens on the right Hand 
Side of the Road, going out of Town, have been digged up 
several Roman Vessels, as Urns, Ampulla?, and other Things ; 
and among the rest, an Head of Janus, cut in Stone, that is 
still preserved, being placed over the Door at the Entry of one 
of those Gardeners Houses. Money was offered for this Janus\s 
Head, but it would not be taken ; being kept superstitiously, 
as tho" 1 it were found by Revelation in a Dream ; a Woman, 
about the Time it was found, dreaming, she was brought to 
Bed of a Child with two Faces. 

" At Peckham was a very large Urn of Glass digged up in 
the Highway, which is now in Gresham College. For these 
last Accounts I am beholden to my Friend, the abovesaid Mr 
Bagford, late deceased in the Charter-house, having been a 
brother there. 

"In April, in the Year 1707, divers Roman Antiquities were 
found in digging by the Wall near Bishopsgate within. Mr 
Joseph Miller, an Apothecary, living very near the Place, while 
the Labourers were digging for Foundations and Cellars, for 
some new Houses to be built in Camomile-street, did first dis- 
cover several of these Antiquities ; which he communicated to 
Dr Woodward of Gresham College aforesaid : Who, according 
to his wonted Exactness, gave this Narration of them in a Letter 
to Sir Christopher Wren, which he courteously let me peruse : 
' About four Feet under Ground was discovered a Pavement, 
consisting of diced Bricks, the most red, but some black, and 
others yellow : each somewhat above an Inch in Thickness. 
The Extent of the Pavement in Length was uncertain, it 
running from Bishopsgate for sixty Feet, quite under the 
Foundation of some Houses not yet pulled down. Its Breadth 
was about ten Feet, terminating on that Side, at the Distance 
of three Feet and a half from the Wall. 

" ' Sinking downwards under the Pavement, only Rubbish 



364 LONDON 

occurred for about two Feet, and then the Workmen came to a 
Stratum of Clay in its natural State : In which, at the Depth 
of three Feet more, were found several Urns. Some of them 
were become so tender and rotten, that they easily crumbled 
and fell to Pieces. As for those that had the Fortune better 
to escape the Injuries of Time, and the Strokes of the Work- 
men, they were of different Forms ; but all of very handsome 
Make and Contrivance, as, indeed, most of the Roman Vessels 
we find ever are : Which is but one of the many Instances that 
are this Day extant of the Art of that People, of the great 
Exactness of their Genius, and Happiness of their Fancy. 
These Urns were of various Magnitudes; the largest capable of 
holding three full Gallons, the least somewhat above a Quart. 
All these had in them Ashes and Cinders of burnt Bones. 

" ' Along with the Urns were found various other earthen 
Vessels ; as, a Simpulus, a Patera of a very fine red Earth, and 
a bluish Glass Phial of that Sort that is commonly called a 
Lachrymatory. On this there appeared something like Gilding, 
very fine. - ' 

" There were likewise found several Beads, one or two Copper 
Rings, a Fibula of the same Metal, but much impaired and 
decayed ; as also a Coin of Antoninus Pius, exhibiting on one 
Side the Head of that Emperor, with a radiated Crown on, and 
this Inscription, Antoninus Aug . . . 

" At about the same Depth with the Things beforementioned 
but nearer to the City Wall, and without the Verge of the 
Pavement, was digged up an human Skull, with several Bones 
that had not been burnt, as those in the Urns had : But, for a 
larger and more satisfactory Account of these Antiquities, I 
refer the Reader to the said learned Doctor's Letter, now 
printed at large by Mr Hearne, with Leland's Itinerary, in 
Octavo. 

" An Elephant's Body was found in a Field near to Sir John 
01dcastle\s, not far from Battle -bridge, by Mr John Coniers, an 
Apothecary, and a great Searcher after Antiquities, as he was 
digging there. 



APPENDIX 365 

" Some Years ago, on the south Side of Ludgate, was taken 
up, out of the Rubbish, a Roman Inscription, taken notice of 
by learned Men. 

"Coming in at Ludgate, in the Residentiary 's Yard of St 
Paul's, was discovered some Years ago an Aqueduct, close ad- 
joining to the Wall of the City. And such another was found 
after the Fire by Mr Span in Holyday yard in Creed lane, in 
digging the Foundation for a new Building ; and this was carried 
round a Bath, that was built in a Roman Form, with Niches at 
an equal Distance for Seats. 

" Anno 1716, in digging for the Foundation of a new Church, 
to be erected where the Church of St Mary Woolnoth in 
Lombard -street stood, at the Depth of about 15 Feet, and so 
lower to 22 Feet, were found Roman Vessels, both for sacred 
and domestic Uses, of all Sorts, and in great Abundance, but all 
broken : And withal were taken up Tuske and Bones of Boars 
and Goats ; as also many Medals and Pieces of Metals ; some 
tesselated Works, a Piece of an Aqueduct ; and at the very 
Bottom a Well filled up with Mire and Dirt ; which being taken 
away, there arose a fine Spring of Water. Dr Harwood, of the 
Commons, has been very exact in taking Notice from Time to 
Time of these Antiquities; and hath sorted and preserved a 
great many of the most curious and remarkable of them ; and 
supposeth, by probable Conjecture, that here was not only a 
Pottery, but also, that on this Place, or near it, stood the Temple 
of Concord ; which our Roman Historians speak of to have been 
in this City, when called Trinobantum. These Sheards were in 
such vast Quantities, that many Cart-loads were carried away 
with the Rubbish, and the Roads about St George's Fields in 
Southwark mended with them. 

" Anno 1718, in the Month of May, the Workmen, pulling 
down a Wall at Bridewel Hospital, found a Gold Ring an Inch 
and a Quarter broad, enamelled : Having the Resemblance of 
Christ on the Cross engraved on it, with a mourning Heart, and 
a Pillar with a Cock on the Top. The Inscription was in 
Arabic ; and some Antiquaries who saw it, reckoned it to be 



366 LONDON 

1500 Years since it was made. This is related in the Weekly 
Journal, No. 1047. 

" This is what I could, by diligent Enquiry of my Friends, 
collect, concerning Antiquities found in London." 

IV (p. 88) 

A complement to the poem quoted in the text (p. 88) is to be 
found in the Anglo-Saxon version of the Beowulf Saga. Dr 
Stjerna's valuable essays on Beowulf recently translated by Mr 
Clark Hall for the Viking Club suggest that the text as we 
have it is an Anglo-Saxon writing of an older tradition, and he 
gives good evidence of this. Incidentally he points out that 
the hiding-place for treasure "was a huge treasure-house 
supported by stone arches resting on pillars or columns, and 
that the exterior of the dragon's abode is several times called a 
wall," and that this idea " is easily explainable if it originated 
in England, which had been occupied only two centuries before 
by the vault-building Romans. The construction of the hall 
is said to have been the work of giants. The Anglo-Saxon 
conception of giants was that of a strange, remote, half-legendary 
people of high technical skill. When the Romans evacuated 
England they drew away to the south for ever, and it was 
natural that the monuments they left behind them should be 
regarded as the work of a race which had disappeared from 
England and who were endowed with extraordinary technical 
skill" (pp. 37, 38). 

V (p. 185) 

Sir Walter Raleigh believed whole-heartedly in the schemes 
which were to begin England's extension of Empire and to 
pour the riches of the new world into London. Writing on the 
13th November 1595 to Sir Robert Cecil, he says : u You may 
perceive that it is no dream which I have reported of Guiana, 
and if one image have been brought from thence weighing 47 
kintalls, which cannot be so little worth as 100 thousand pounds, 
I know that in Manoa there are store of these. I know it will 



APPENDIX 367 

be presently followed both by the Spanish and French, and if 
it be foreslowed by us I conclude that we are curst of God. 
In the meantime I humbly beseech you to move Her Majesty 
that none be suffered to foil the enterprise, and that those kings 
of the borders which are by my labour, peril, and charge won to 
Her Majesty's love and obedience be not by other pilferers lost 
again. I hope I shall be thought worthy to direct those actions 
that I have at my own charge laboured in, and to govern that 
country which I have discovered and hope to conquer for the 
Queen without her cost. I am sending away a bark to the 
country to comfort and assure the people, that they despair not 
nor yield to any composition with other nations " (Hist. MSS. 
Com., Hatfield House, v. p. 457). The queen herself was the 
centre of the movement, as the correspondence of the period 
shows. " The company and associate adventurers into Russia 
and other the north east parts for the discovery of new trades " 
were in difficulties in 1515, and letters to Sir Robert Cecil give 
most interesting details of the transactions of the company 
(ibid., p. 462). 

VI (p. 202) 

It is curious that just at this time a discovery at Woolwich 
revives the interest in the shipping of this date. The discovery 
consists of parts of a large wooden ship. It is not yet estab- 
lished whether they are the remains of a sixteenth-century man- 
of-war, such as the Great Harry, or of an eighteenth-century 
merchantman, unknown and unhonoured. 

The facts stated in the text dispose of the theory of it being 
Drake's ship, the Pelican, though it may be another ship of 
his fleet. The Times states the case as follows : — 

" The first announcement of the finding of the ship appeared 
in the Times so long ago as 19th November 1912, when it was 
stated that a section, about thirty feet wide and in a good state 
of preservation, was unearthed during excavations on the site of 
the new electricity station of the Woolwich Borough Council 
on the south bank of the Thames. The place was immediately 



368 LONDON 

visited by the late Sir William White, formerly Assistant 
Controller of the Navy and Director of Naval Construction, 
who examined the remains and expressed the opinion that the 
vessel had been there about a hundred and fifty years. In 
January last the notice of the Committee of the London County 
Council who are interested in local government records and 
antiquities was called to the remains. They sent a representa- 
tive to Woolwich, who took photographs of the ship while it 
was being excavated, and made measurements of its parts. 

"The matter has now been revived by Mr Seymour Lucas, 
R.A., who painted 'The Armada in Sight. 1 He has inspected 
the timbers, and is convinced they are the remains of an early 
sixteenth-century ship of war, probably the Great Harry, which 
was burnt to the water's edge and taken to the dock built at 
Woolwich in 1521, where the hull sank. He says: 

" ' Although little is known of the construction of these ships 
of this early date, the closeness of the ribs, the size of the 
keelson as seen in the photographs, are absolutely irrefutable 
evidence of the date of the hull. I was shown two wheels, 
evidently those of a gun-carriage of the time of Henry VIII. 
or of the early years of Elizabeth, some stone cannon-balls, and 
some pieces of Elizabethan pottery, all of which had been taken 
out of the hull. Of course, an antiquary would probably have 
obtained much additional evidence if he could have been present 
durina: the excavations. When I arrived the timbers of the 
wreck were being carted away to Castles 1 timber-yard. 1 

"The timbers have been bought by Messrs Hindleys, archi- 
tectural decorators, Welbeck Street, who are disposed to 
believe, on the testimony of an expert in naval history, that 
they are rather the remains of the Pelican, which was long 
preserved at Deptford, as a monument of Drake's voyage, and 
is supposed to have been removed to Woolwich some time in 
the eighteenth century. Therefore the difficult question of 
the identity of the ship remains to be solved 11 (Times, 9th 
December 1913). 



APPENDIX 369 

VII (p. 211) 

Eltham Palace is well worth an extra note in a book on 
London, and I quote from the Times of 19th April 1913 the 
following facts : — 

" Eltham Palace, where the Office of Works is now carrying 
out an interesting scheme of preservation, stands on the brow 
of a green slope looking westwards towards the hills of 
Greenwich and South London. The most attractive route 
to Eltham is from Greenwich — a walk of about four miles. 
This route leads us through Greenwich Park, past the Obser- 
vatory, and out on Blackheath at the end of the chestnut 
avenue. Slanting leftwards across the Heath, for the lowest 
corner past the further pond, we turn through a wicket- 
gate and follow a path under trees. On the right stands 
Morden College — one of the most perfect minor examples of 
Wren's building, placed in delightful gardens open to the 
public. The path comes out on the road at Kidbrooke 
church ; and on the other side of the road a field-path leads 
on to Eltham. 

" The glories of Eltham as a residence of English sovereigns 
began to fade when Henry VIII. transferred his affections to 
the palace at Greenwich. But apart from any sentimental 
associations which Henry VIII. may have left for his birthplace, 
the supersession of the old palace on the hill by the new one 
by the waterside was almost inevitable. Eltham was a Royal 
manor as early as Saxon times, and probably a very ancient 
settlement; the name itself is said to mean ' old home' or 
dwelling. It lies high and dry on the Blackheath pebble-beds, 
in just the open and well-drained situation where early settlers 
would cluster. The Domesday record shows it well supplied 
with arable land in proportion to its woodland and meadow, 
as we should expect in a site of this kind, but with no mill. 
There is no stream which could easily be made to turn one. 
As long as the flats beneath the hill at Greenwich were a tidal 
marsh, the Eltham plateau was a far preferable position ; but 

24 



370 LONDON 

the reclamation of the Thames shore brought Greenwich 
closely in touch with London by the natural highway of 
the river. 

" James I. was the last monarch who is known to have visited 
it, and after the death of Charles I. it was ordered to be sold 
tor the benefit of the public. The survey taken at this time 
gives an idea of the extent of the palace buildings as late as 
the seventeenth century. It states that the ' capital mansion 
called Eltham House ' consisted of ' one fair chapel, a great 
hall, thirty-six rooms, and offices below stairs, with two cellars ; 
above stairs, seventeen lodging rooms on the King's side, twelve 
rooms on the Queen's side, and nine on the Prince's, with 
various other necessary rooms and closets. Also thirty-five 
bays of building, containing seventy-eight rooms used as offices 
round the courtyard. 1 The report adds that only the great 
hall and the chapel were then furnished, and that the whole 
was very much out of repair. Every trace above ground of the 
chapel has now vanished, though excavation would probably 
show its foundations ; it formed, no doubt, a convenient quarry 
for builders in a district where there is no building stone 
close at hand. It stood between the gateway and the great 
hall, and was twisted out of the general plan of the building in 
order to give it the proper orientation. The hall was spared 
because its great size made it useful for a barn, but the glass 
and stonework perished, and the windows were later blocked up 
with brick. Besides this noble building, of which the fifteenth- 
century timber roof is one of the most beautiful in England, 
the most important remains within the area enclosed by the 
moat are the retaining wall of the terrace and the lower courses 
of some of the dwelling rooms next to the moat, which 
apparently escaped complete destruction owing to their being 
sunk beneath the level of the soil above. Under the floor of 
these rooms there still exists in very fair repair a covered way 
to a private bridge built for himself by Henry VIII., just above 
the level of the water, out to the park beyond. On the 
opposite side of the palace the main bridge of four pointed 



APPENDIX 371 

arches leading from the outer court to the inner gatehouse still 
spans the moat. On three sides the dry bed of the moat now 
forms part of the garden of the private residence which stands 
next to the hall ; and an engraving in Lysons's Environs of 
London, published in 1796, shows in front of the gateway only 
a narrow pool of water stopping short of the bridge. Now the 
water extends for the full length of the moat on this side, 
though not for its exceptional original breadth of a hundred 
feet ; and the moat and old bridge, with a glimpse of the great 
hall beyond, form a singularly delightful picture. 

" A plan preserved among the family papers at Hatfield 
gives a great deal of information about the arrangement of the 
whole area inside the moat, and the Record Office has another 
plan of the buildings in the two outer courts beyond the bridge. 
From these plans, together with such details as that given in 
the Commonwealth survey and the records of historic visits, it 
can be well understood that there was good reason for a hall of 
ample size. When Henry VIII. kept Christmas here, as he did 
more than once in plague years, apparently for the sake of safe 
retirement, we are told that only his personal attendants were 
allowed to dine with him in the hall. But in earlier reigns the 
palace must often have been crowded with the retinues of the 
King and Queen and of princes and nobles, who were each 
assigned their several suites of chambers, and met together in 
chapel and in hall. There were several successive palaces or 
Royal dwellings upon this site ; we hear of Christmas being 
kept on the country cheer of Eltham by Henry III., who may 
have built the first of them. This thirteenth-century palace 
was either enlarged or rebuilt by Anthony Beke, Bishop of 
Durham, who retained it after the rightful owner fell at 
Bannockburn, and returned it at his own death to the Crown. 
The date of the present hall is fortunately fixed by the survival 
of accounts of expenditure on it for a specified fortnight in the 
autumn of 1479. 

" More than four hundred years have passed, for many of 
which the rain had free entry through the ruined windows, and 



372 LONDON 

the hall now stands in urgent need of repair. The work already 
undertaken on it includes the removal of the rough brickwork, 
with which the empty windows had been filled for the protection 
of the interior against the weather, and the restoration of the 
original design. The Reigate stone used by the fifteenth-century 
builders has in places weathered very badly ; and this is being 
replaced by more durable stone where it is decayed. The work 
is being carried out with scrupulous taste and care. Owing to 
the ample design of the windows, the solid structure of the walls 
was from the first hardly sufficient to take the weight of the 
roof securely. In the course of centuries of neglect the roof has 
opened and spread until the centre of the beams no longer 
follows a true line, and the windows have been forced out of 
position. The distortion is hardly noticeable on a general view 
from below, but introduces grave difficulties in restoring the 
design. In the great southern bay at the west end of the hall, 
when one of the vanished mullions of the oriel window came to 
be replaced, it was found that it would no longer meet the shaft 
of the surviving tracery above. In another part of the same 
oriel window the restored tracery would not fit the widened 
curve of the arch. No attempt has been made either to 
introduce sham fifteenth-century work of twentieth-century con- 
struction or to distort the new work necessary for the preserva- 
tion of the structure into an imitation of the gradual warping 
of time. The new work inserted in the walls and windows to 
prevent further decay is frankly dated ' 1912," 1 though — unlike 
most of the previous repairs on the spot — it is carefully sub- 
ordinated to what is old. Where the tracery would not meet 
the replaced mullion, it has been supported as it stands, and left 
a few inches out of the true line, but safe for the future. Where 
the spread arch is too wide for the replaced tracery, the design 
has not been falsified by widening it, but a narrow fillet of 
stonework has been interposed to fill the gap. Owing to the 
original slightness of the stonework, and subsequent neglect, 
the work of repair has been one of extreme delicacy. The 
defaced vaulting of one of the bays was successfully held in 



APPENDIX 373 

place while its supports were being strengthened, when a slip 
of a fraction of an inch would have brought it down. A large 
proportion of the stones in the windows, and of those in the 
bridge spanning the- moat, are now held individually in place by 
copper ties. In every case where it has been necessary to insert 
modern work, the architect in charge of historic buildings under 
the Office of Works and the Inspector of Ancient Monuments 
have aimed at keeping it subordinate to the original design, 
and in harmony with it, while not attempting to conceal its 
modern date. 

"The same scrupulous judgment is shown in the work pro- 
gressing on other parts of the old palace. Where the brick 
bays overhanging the dry moat on the west were hacked away 
within the swing of a man working a pickaxe, they have been 
underpinned here and there by inserting old bricks of the same 
mellow redness. The colour of the brickwork about the palace 
is one of its great charms ; and a method of pointing has been 
devised which spares all its delicacy, while repairing it as 
effectually as the ugliest cement or plaster. Roughcast of a 
carefully chosen consistency is dabbed in, and then worked over 
with a wet brush, until the coarser grit stands out with a 
surface and colour which blend harmoniously with the brick. 
The effect is extremely good, and the method might well be 
copied by all who cherish old but decayed brick walls. A 
curious feature of the old garden, outside the moat, is a row of 
niches in the wall, in which brasiers were probably placed to 
protect the fruit-blossom on frosty spring nights. They were 
blocked with plaster, which has now been removed. Much care 
and labour have been spent on the bridge, which threatened to 
collapse under stress of the heavy motor traffic of the last few 
years. By bonding the stones with copper, and grouting the 
interior with liquid cement, the whole bridge will practically 
become a monolith, and will offer secure resistance to anv form 
of traffic. An incidental result of this work was the discovery 
of the pit of the old drawbridge. Another important piece of 
consolidating work is being carried out where the retaining 



374 LONDON 

wall of the terrace had slipped forward on a layer of clay and 
threatened to fall into the moat. The clay bed has been 
excavated, and replaced by one of cement, which should prevent 
any further travels. 

" The work already done is of the utmost value in safeguard- 
ing the remains of this palace against further decay, and reveal- 
ing their beauties more fully. But the hall, which is the 
peculiar glory of the spot, is still in an extremely unsafe state, 
and urgently needs thorough repair. The heavy roof continues 
to thrust out the walls, and some of its own beams are very 
much decayed. Their rottenness makes them a wholly in- 
adequate support for the iron ties which were inserted as a 
measure of safety some years ago ; and it is impossible to trust 
to them any longer." 

VIII (p. 258) 

Wren was so great a Londoner that it might have been 
imagrined that care should have been taken of his house in 
Botolph Lane. But it has reached its last stages, as the following 
letter to the Times, 15th April 1913, indicates: "The last 
remnants of this house, which, by tradition, was designed, 
built, and occupied by the great architect as his residence in 
the city of London during the patching up of the old and the 
construction of the present St Paul's Cathedral, have been 
acquired to-day through purchase by Alderman Sir Charles 
Wakefield. The grand staircase with wall panelling, the door- 
ways with curved pediments and elaborate mouldings, and 
the grand landing complete the detail of the acquisition, 
which is to find a new home on this side of the Atlantic. 
Some account of the building, which was condemned in 1906 
as a ' dangerous structure,' appeared in the Architectural 
Review, vol. xix., and the staircase is pictured in Mr Walter 
Godfrey's The English Staircase, edition MCMXI." {Times, 
15th April 1913). 



APPENDIX 375 

IX (p. 280) 

It is curious that specimens of the tapestries referred to in 
the text have only recently been added to the national collection 
in the Victoria and Albert Museum. The Times of 25th July 
1913 gives the following description : — 

" One of these is a Mortlake tapestry of the first half of the 
seventeenth century. The tapestry forms one of a set of six 
representing the history of Hero and Leander, which were woven 
between the years 1623 and 1636 from the cartoons of Francis 
Clein, or Cleyn, who died in 1658, a native of Rostock, who 
was employed for many years as a designer for the Mortlake 
factory. In the bottom right-hand corner is the mark of Sir 
Francis Crane, who died in 1636, the first director of the Mort- 
lake factory. The tapestry is woven in wool and silk on 
woollen warps. The body of Leander lies on the rocky shore 
near a circular tower. Hero kneels beside him holding up her 
hands in unrestrained grief, and a female attendant behind 
stands sorrowing with her hands clasped together. Cupid 
holding the torch is seated on a rock to the right. The sun is 
rising; over the sea in the distance. The broad border is filled 
with strapwork, intertwined with garlands of flowers and 
leaves which are supported by diminutive winged boys. There 
is a medallion in each corner, and another in the middle of 
each side : the former contain figures of winged boys (perhaps 
the Winds) ; that in the top border is plain ; those on the left 
and right represent Hero clasping the body of Leander while 
a male figure endeavours to pull her away, and a figure of 
Neptune riding on the waves. The medallion at the bottom 
encloses the inscription, ' Luget amor nutrixque gemit moritura 
marita dum ruit in laceri naufraga membra viri. 1 The second 
of these tapestries was woven at Lambeth about 1670-80, and 
represents a scene from the story of Troy. It is woven in wool, 
silk, and silver thread on woollen warps. It most probably 
represents the seizure of Cassandra by Agamemnon during the 
sack of the city, with the earlier episode of her rape from the 



376 LONDON 

temple of Minerva seen in the background (Virgil's jEneid, ii. 
403-6). The shield-of-arms of the Earl of Meath, with the 
motto « Vota [rendered as Vata] Vita Mea, 1 occupies the middle 
of the upper border. The design of this tapestry is probably 
due to Francis Clein. The words 'Made at Lambeth 1 are 
woven into the lower border. It was probably made by William 
Benood, a tapestry- weaver of that place. 11 



INDEX 



Act of Parliament for rebuilding 

London, 259-266. 
Adams, William, 204. 
Africa, Roman, 340. 
Aldermen, Court of, 151. 

election of, 192-193. 

Aldwych, 1 13, 127. 

Alfred (King), 5, 93, 111-115. 

Allectus, 70, 130. 

Altars, 57, 59, 60, 61. 

Amphitheatre, 51. 

Anderida, 93. 

Anglo-Saxon London, 1,9, 12, 14, 

15,84,87-91, 105, m-134. 
Ansgar the Sheriff, 5, 15. 
Apollo, bronze figure of, 67. 
Armada, Drake and the, 202. 
Arms, city in, 5, 143, 195-197, 240. 
Arrest of citizens, 288. 
Arthur, Artorius, 77. 
Atys, bronze figure of, 67. 
Augusta, Roman name for London, 

13, 24, 49, 86. 
Augustus, deified, worship of, 37. 

Baal, cult of, 10. 

Bagnigge Wells, 295. 

Baker at work, 152. 

Balance, bronze, Roman, 49. 

Barons, army of the, 5, 197. 

Barons of St Paul's, 144. 

Bear-baiting, 141. 

Bear Garden, 51, 206. 

Belinus, Celtic god, 20. 

Beowulf poem, 88, 366. 

Berkeley Square, 307. 

Betting in London, 231. 

Birch (Colonel) plan for rebuilding 

London, 259, 267. 
Bloomsbury, 212. 
Boer War, city volunteers, 6. 
Bond Street, 300. 



377 



Boudicca, taking of London by, 17, 

46, 87. 
Boundary mark, 48. 
Brandon House, 211. 
Bridewell Palace, given to the poor, 

222-229. 
Bridge, 49, 212, 217. 
Buckingham Palace, 296, 297. 
Building of London, 252, 253, 259- 

266. 
Burbage, Cuthbert, 207. 
Burbage, James, 207. 
Burbage, Richard, 207. 
Burghs, five, of Scotland, 342. 

Caerleon, 92-93, 130. 

Caerwent inscription, 77. 

Calais, surrender of, 190. 

Camp, early London, 48. 

Canal, Regent's, 299-300. 

Capital, cosmopolitan character of, 

336. 
Carausius, 70, 130. 
Carlisle, 99. 
Cassivellaunus, 22. 
Celtic civilisation, 1 1. 
London, 1, 11, 18, 20-43, 75, 

82,351. 

religious influences, 43. 

Ceremonial, Roman, 70. 

Chancellor, Sir Richard, 203. 

Chancery Lane, 213. 

Charles I., 237, 243. 

Charles II., 256. 

Charter rights, 136, 137, 247, 248, 

249, 250. 
Cheapside, Goldsmith's Row, 272. 
Chelsey House, 276-7. 
Chiswick House, 296. 
Church jurisdiction, 99. 
Churches on Roman sites, 94. 
Cinque Ports, 342. 



378 



LONDON 



City-institution, 7, 72, 134-164, 348. 
City-state, 15, 69, 72, 333, 334, 338- 

.345- 
Civilised consciousness, 335. 
Coins, Roman, 69, 70, 71, 72, 74, 75. 
Colchester, worship of the Emperor 

at, 37- 
Colonia, London not a, 23, 25. 
Coloniae in Britain, 53. 
Commerce, 101, 182, 230-231. 
Common Council, 237, 245, 247, 285. 
Common fields outside London, 1 28. 
Common good, 158. 
Common Hall, 119, 243, 286,290, 

291. 
Commonwealth London, 1, 240-243. 
Commune of London, 137-140. 
Companies, city, supervision of poor 

by, 224, 249. 
Constitutional position of London, 

169,242,287,291,334. 
Continental cities, 107. 
Continuity of London, 4, 8, 18, 19, 

43, 7h 75, Io6 . '34, 1/6, 182, 

I 85, 197, 240, 241, 246, 251, 

290, 333. 348. 
Cordwainers' gild, 157. 
Costume, 55, 68. 
Covent Garden, 212, 269. 
Crayford, battle of, 5, 13, 97, 197. 
Custom of the city, 5, 71, 158, 179, 

185, 187, 245, 292. 
Cybele, bronze figure of, 67. 

Danish London, 15, 98, 113-115, 

127, 129, 133. 

towns, league of the, 342. 

Davis, John, 203. 

Deae Matres, cult of, 57, 59. 

Decurions, 53. 

Deptford, 202. 

Destruction, Anglo-Saxon, 90. 

Diana, cult of, 57-63, 82, 84, 353, 

356, 362. 
Divinity of kingship, 238. 
Domesday boroughs, 343. 
Drake, Sir Francis, 197-198, 202- 

3. 367, 3 68 - 
Drama, English, developed in 

London, 204-209. 
Druidism, 10. 
Drury Lane, 212, 269. 
Ducking stool, 124. 



East India Company, 204. 
Ecclesiastical court, 146. 
Edgware Road, 313. 
Edward VI. and Bridewell Palace, 



iii 00 : 



Election of kings and chiefs, Eng- 
lish, 1 12, 118, 168. 

Elizabeth (Queen), 192, 253. 

Eltham Palace, 211, 369-374. 

Empire, London the capital city of 
the, 259, 330, 331, 334. 

Erasmus, 185. 

Essex, Earl of, 200. 

Estates, the great, 306-307. 

Ethnology of London area, 21. 

European character of Tudor 
London, 213-216. 

Evening Post, 288-290. 

Expansion of cities, 343. 

of London, 209-213, 219, 221, 

230,251-255,271,273,293-308, 
311-332,343. 

Extensions of London functions, 3, 
4,72, 178. 

Family organisation, Roman, 68. 

Feast, Lord Mayor's, 187, 188, 247. 

Feasts, livery companies', 192. 

Fetters, 123. 

Finsbury, 98, 241. 

Fire of London rebuilding schemes, 

257-266. 
Fishing in religious cult, 39, 40, 66. 
Fishmongers' gild, 159. 
Fleet Bridge, 162. 
Fleet River, 294. 
Foeship in gild history, 155. 
Folkmoot, 1 1 5-1 19, 147, 169. 
Foreign visitors, 214-218, 276. 
Forum, 51. 

Frobisher, Sir Martin, 203. 
Frosts on the Thames, 277, 278. 
Functions of city government, 344. 

Gallows, 127. 

Georgian London, 1, 8, 19, 283-310. 
Giant builders, 88. 
Gilds, 122-124, 152-158. 
Globe Theatre, 208. 
God, river, in white marble, 35, 36. 
Goldsmiths' Row, 272. 
Government of extra London, 324- 
326, 328. 



INDEX 



379 



Gracious Street, drapers' shops in, 

200. 
Graves, Celtic, 26. 
Greek parallels, 345. 
Greenwich, 192, 203, 214, 215-216, 

274, 296. 
Gresham, Sir Thomas, 191. 
Guildhall, 188,238, 239. 
Gurthrigernus, 78. 

Hackney, 215. 

Hadrian, bronze head of, 38. 
Hammersmith, 3 1 5—3 1 7- 
Hampstead Heath and Boudicca 

tradition, 87. 
Hastings, battle of, 5, 197. 
Heathenism of London, 14. 
Henry VIII., 5, 193, I95- IQ 7, 211, 

241. 
Historical influences, 2, 3, 4, 6, 9, 

10, 18, 54, 141, 243, 286, 332, 

338. 
Holborn, 212, 320. 
Holborn Bridge, 162. 
Honorius, letter to the cities, 53. 
House religion, Roman, 57, 58. 
Hustings Court, 120-121. 
Hut circles, Celtic, 27. 
Hyde Park, 295-296. 

Inscriptions, 41, 51, 53, 55. 
Insignia, Roman, 131. 
Isledon, Islington, 21, 51, 295. 

James I., 187, 253. 

James II., 243, 244. 

Judicial appeals from the dominions, 

.330. 
Jupiter, bronze figure of, 67. 
Jurisdictional boundaries, 97. 

Key, bronze, Roman, 80. 

iron, Roman, 50, 56. 

King of London, 79, 82, 130, 133, 

139, 244. 
Kingship, Stuart conception of, 238. 
Kingston, English crowning place, 

112, 127. 
Knightsbridge, 313. 

Labour in relation to capital, 336. 
Laindon, 28. 



Lambeth, 215, 279, 280. 
Lambeth Palace, 211. 
Lamp, Roman, 44, 63-64. 
Lancaster, Sir John, 204. 
Land development rights, 270. 

succession rights, 102. 

Language, Roman, 55, 68. 
Latimer, Bishop, 201, 219. 
Latin language, 55. 
Law of London contra national 

law, 150, 151, 290. 

Roman, 102-105, 121. 

Leadenhall, 51, 93-94. 
Leagues of cities, 342. 
Lincoln's Inn, 213, 219, 220. 
London, maps and views of, 136. 

name of, 86. 

London Stone, 48, 1 18. 

Long Acre, 212. 

Lordship of the English system, 

1 11. 
Love of London, 16, 17, 46, 47, 332. 
Lud tradition, 16, 20, 26, 34-42, 82. 
Lydney, temple of Lud at, 34-42. 

Majesty, as title of the king, 183. 

Manors outside London, 99, 102, 
162. 

Mantua, picture of London at, 2 13-4. 

Maps, picture, 212. 

Markets, tolls from, 273. 

Mary (Queen), 186-187. 

Marylebone Park, 298, 299. 

Mayor, election of, 189-192. 

Mellitus,Bishop,and London pagan- 
ism, 84. 

Mercury, bronze figure of, 67. 

Middlesex, Roman field plotting in, 

54- 
territorium jurisdiction, 100, 

101, 142. 
Mile End, 5,95, 143, 194, 195-197, 

286. 
Mithra, cult of, 57, 58, 59. 
Moor of London, 100. 
More, Sir Thomas, 185. 
Mortlake, 280. 

Municipal interchanges, 341, 345. 
Municipium, London a, 24, 25. 

Nash (John) town-planning scheme, 

297-3 5 
Newbury, battle of, 6, 241. 



380 



LONDON 



Norman London, i, 15, 134-164. 
Notting Hill, 317. 

Offices, city, nominees of the crown 

for, 189. 
Oppidum, British, 22, 30. 
Ornaments, personal, Roman, 56. 
Orphans, city, 189. 
Oxford Circus, 301. 

Paddington, 295, 296. 

Paganism in London, 84. 

Pall Mall, 301. 

Parish, provision for poor in the, 

224, 229. 
Parliament, London and, 8, 235, 

237, 238, 239, 246, 284-290. 
Peace of the world, 335. 
Personal law, 104. 
Pety Wales, place-name, 80-81, 172. 
Piccadilly Circus, 301. 
Pile dwellings, 27, 32, 33, 34. 
Pillory, 122, 153. 
Pincers, iron, Roman, 51, 78, 79. 
Pitsea, 28. 
Place-names, 21. 
Plantagenet London, 1, 5, 19, 161- 

164, 166, 176-179, 207, 213, 

238. 
Pole, Cardinal, 185, 195. 
Pomerium, 53, 97-98. 
Poor, Bridewell Palace scheme, 

222-229. 
Potteries, the, 317. 
Prittlewell, 28. 

Proclamation, government by, 229. 
Publicani, 53. 

Race problems of the future, 337. 

Raleigh, Sir Walter, 200, 204, 366. 

Ratcliff, 203. 

Regency scheme, 297-305. 

Regent Street, 302, 305. 

Regent's Park, 304. 

Religion, Celtic, 34~43> 67, 76, 

82-85. 

Roman, 35, 56-68, 82-83. 

Retiarius, inscription to a, 51, 52. 
Roads, Celtic, 27. 

modern, 308. 

Roman, 50, 76. 

Roman civilisation in Britain, 9, 23- 

25,87, 131. 



Roman London, 1, 9, 11, 13, 19, 35, 

44-73, 346, 351-366. 
parallels, 5, 26, 48, 50, 53, 69, 

72, 86, 108, 173-176, 333, 337, 

339, 34o. 

St Giles, 318-319. 

St James, Court of, 279. 

St James's Park, 213, 257. 

St Martin's Lane, 212. 

St Paul ; s, jurisdiction of, 143-150. 

lands of, 99. 

site of, 29, 42, 62, 63, 64, 219, 

267-269, 353-357- 

St Paul's Cathedral, Wren's, 256. 

Sandals, 55. 

Sanitary conditions, 315-323. 

Saris, John, 204. 

Savoy, the, 225. 

Scale beam, bronze, Roman, 54. 

Science, influence of, 336. 

Seal, castellain, of London, 140. 

mayoralty, of London, 137, 1 58. 

of Edward II., 171. 

of Henry II., 165. 

of Henry III., 166. 

of Henry IV., 177. 

of Richard II., 172. 

of Richard III., 170. 

Sewers, 271,313-315. 

Shakespeare, 198. 

Ship, Drake's, 198, 202-203. 

Roman, 56. 

Silchester boundaries, 96. 

Silures, 77. 

Site of London, 21-23, 28-30. 

Skulls, human, as trophies, 32, 33. 

Sokes, Norman, 139, 143, 155. 

Southampton Estate Act, 307. 

Southwark, 199, 211, 236, 293, 312. 

Sovereignty, London and the, 12, 
106, 129-133, 166, 167, 169, 
170, 186-194, 233, 235, 284, 

334- 
Squares, 306. 
Stags, remains of sacrificed, 62-63, 

353, 362, 365. 
State, new conceptions of the, 186, 

324- 
Statuette, bronze, of Diana, 61. 
Steelyard, bronze, Roman, 83. 
Stephen (King), 5, 167, 168, 169. 
Stepney, 128. 



INDEX 



381 



Stocks, 125. 

Stoney Street, 51. 

Strand palaces, 211, 235. 

Strategical importance, 6, 47. 

Streams, 313-315. 

Streets, narrowness of, 263. 

Strigil, Roman, 56. 

Stuart London, 1, 19, 216, 218, 232, 

233-282. 
Survivals of Roman culture, 74-109. 
Swan Theatre, 205. 
Sword, carried with point upwards, 

189, 250-251. 

Tapestry weaving, 159, 279-280, 

375- 
Temple, dedicated to worship of 

the Emperor, 38. 

of Diana, 63-65. 

Roman, 66-67. 

Territorial state, 183-184. 

Territorium, 53, 98-101. 

Thames, importance of, to London, 

186-187, 197, 198,274,277. 

jurisdiction, 100. 

land sites of, 28-31. 

Theatres, 205-209, 345. 

Tilbury, 28. 

Tower of London, 170, 171, 172-173, 

181. 
Tower in Roman wall, 46, 47, 95. 
Town planning, 305. 
Trade development, 184, 197, 198. 
Traditional influences, 10, 11, 15, 

16, 26, 78, 79-92, 244, 292. 
Travellers in London, 214-218, 

275-6. 
Tree rite, Roman, 60. 
Tribal institutions, 7, 25, 28, 41, 76, 

77- 
Tridents, 51. 



Tudor London, 1,8,19,181-232,281. 
Tumbril, 121. 
Turnham Green, 296. 
Turnpikes, 309. 

Urn, Celtic cinerary, 26. 

Value, increase of land, 265. 

Vase, late Celtic, 27. 

Verulam not the oppidum of Cassi- 

vellaunus, 23. 
Vortigern, 77, 78. 
Vortimer, 78. 

Walls, Roman, 45, 210, 312. 

Walworth, 21, 80. 

Wapping, 203. 

War and city life, 339. 

War, preparations for, 215, 231. 

Weavers' gild, 156. 

Westcliff, 28. 

Westminster, 112, 127, 172, 215, 

221, 312. 
Whipping at the cart-tail, 126. 
Whitehall, 211, 212, 213, 278, 279. 
Wilkes (John), episodes of, 285-290. 
Willougby, Sir Hugh, 203. 
Winchester, 99. 
Winchester House, 211. 
Witenagemot in London, 126. 
Wittenham, 30-31. 
Woodward (Dr) on Roman London, 

357-366. 
Woolwich, 203. 
Work for the poor, 222, 223. 
World empire, 335, 337-345- 
Wren (Sir C), house of, destroyed, 

374- 

on Roman London, 351-357. 

plan for rebuilding the city, 

255>257- 



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